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Council set to acquire more than 100 new build homes from private developer amid COVID-19 uncertainty
Cardiff Council has agreed in principle to acquire roughly 100 homes from its development partner Wates, as a direct response to the impact of COVID-19.
At a meeting yesterday, the council’s cabinet agreed to acquire 107 homes from Wates, subject to due diligence checks by the authority.
The homes are part of four different schemes from the council’s Cardiff Living project, which sees mixed-tenure developments built in partnership between the council and Wates.
They include 28 unsold homes from the partnership’s Willowbrook site and 30 homes that are yet to be marketed from its Briardene site.
Wates has also asked the council to consider changing the partnership’s Llandudno Road scheme to 100% affordable, which would involve the council acquiring 16 houses in total.
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According to the council, agreeing to acquire the homes from Wates will “prevent our current Cardiff Living sites from stalling, removing the risk of market sale properties remaining unsold”.
Wates was appointed in 2016 as the council’s development partner for Cardiff Living, which aims to deliver 1,500 new homes, of which roughly 600 will be council homes for social rent.
The development agreement enables both parties to agree an alternative site delivery approach, including the council purchasing unsold market sale units at “build costs and agreed overheads”.
Wates recently announced that it was letting go roughly 300 members of staff due to the impact of coronavirus on its business.
The decision to acquire homes from Wates came as the council laid out the impact the COVID-19 crisis has had on its own housebuilding ambitions.
In the same report, the council said that widespread site shutdowns at the start of the lockdown period mean that meeting delivery targets for 2021/21 “may potentially prove challenging”.
It said the coronavirus crisis has presented an opportunity for the council to “consider varying its approach to housebuilding in the future” and could see the council moving to building “genuinely tenure-neutral developments”.
This would see the council seeking contracting partnerships rather than developer partnerships, allowing it to build homes directly for sale or market rent, alongside various affordable tenures.
Cardiff Council currently has a target of delivering 1,000 new council homes by 2022, with an additional 1,000 homes in the medium term.
Lynda Thorne, cabinet member for housing and communities at Cardiff Council, said: “An opportunity to acquire 102 more homes than we originally expected through our award-winning Cardiff Living partnership with Wates Residential has arisen.
“The properties include 28 four-bed houses at Silvervale Park, St Mellons; 30 two-bed flats at Briardene, North Road; 33 Passivhaus-compliant flats and houses at Highfields, Heath; and 11 houses at Llandudno Road, Rumney.
“These additional homes could provide much-needed, good-quality affordable homes which the council could rent, or they could potentially go up for sale via our assisted homeownership scheme.
“This is an opportunity we want to thoroughly investigate to see what value it could give residents, the taxpayer and the council.”
