A TARGET for building new affordable housing in Torfaen has increased by 75 homes a year since demand was estimated five years ago.
The borough council’s planning policy did have a requirement, based on a local housing market assessment, of a need for 240 affordable homes to be built every year.
The latest assessment, from 2023 and approved earlier this year by the Welsh Government, has seen that figure increase to 315 new affordable homes a year to meet the current shortfall and future predicted need over the five year period from 2023 to 2028.
Previously the target required that 77 per cent of those homes would be available for social rented housing, usually through housing associations, and 23 per cent be intermediate or low cost home ownership below the market rate.
The latest assessment has revised that balance to 65 per cent social housing and 35 intermediate/low cost.
A report by Adrian Wilcock, the council’s planning policy team leader, stated: “These tenure changes and increased level of need are due to the continued rise of house / rental prices, more people applying to join the Housing Register and Low Cost Home Ownership Scheme, a fall in the annual turnover of social rented properties and increased levels of homelessness.”
The full council agreed to update its supplementary planning guidance, which are updates to its agreed planning policy, to include the new target.
The planning policy, the local development plan agreed in 2013, had set a target of building 4,700 homes over a 15-year period but the council said in October last year that target isn’t expected to be met until either 2026 or 2027 as it was 601 homes shy of meeting it in April 2024.
The total housing target required some 313 homes to be built every year for 15 years.
The council has also agreed to update policies used to calculate the cost of building an affordable home and the value of making provision towards affordable housing, by housing developers, or payments made by them, to the council, in-lieu of providing affordable housing on their sites.
The amount registered social landlords will have to pay housing developers is also covered by the updates and those payments are covered by the rents received from tenants, over time.
Those have been updated to reflect Welsh Government-approved rent increases in April 2024 and April this year.
The report said no registered social landlords objected to the increase and consider them affordable. It stated if the increases, due to rising building costs, weren’t approved the number of affordable houses built on private developments could reduce.