Reaping the dividends in Daventry

With some significant achievements in force, or about to come into place, Daventry District Council is planning ahead to sustain ever-better delivery

Even in the midst of recession, with housing woes a major part of the fallout, the populist – and negative – myths attached to social housing linger. Dispersing these myths is an important part of preparing the ground for the delivery of new affordable homes.

Daventry might be a largely rural district, but it still finds that these myths can be irksome, so tackling them head on is an essential, if natural, component of its efforts to raise awareness and understanding of the issues.

“We are trying to raise the profile of affordable housing to try and interest landowners, among other things, who might be interested in selling land for affordable homes, but there are myths around social housing that we need to dispel,” said Richard Wood, the council’s planning policy and housing strategy manager. “The myths are often around the perception of the tenants who would be occupying them, but actually the affordable housing we’re delivering, particularly with exception sites, are for people within that village. They are designed to meet the needs of each particular parish.”

In a sense, the myth-busting is a natural side-effect of the council’s activities. It works closely with its partners, housing associations, district council members, the community, and also parish councillors, not just to identify local housing need, but also as an ongoing process of training and education – what is affordable housing, what roles the various parties play in the process of identifying and meeting that need, and so on. Often, these can be deceptively simple, but as much as the process challenges myth and raises awareness, it fosters working relationships that can help deliver homes.

Indeed, as part of this process, the district council restructured to bring its housing strategy and planning policy teams together so that they work as one team. The move allowed a ‘cross fertilisation’ that has helped the council to deliver. The council also appointed a dedicated affordable housing officer, Elaine Ferguson, whose task is to work with housing associations, parish councils and landowners to help deliver affordable schemes. She also forms a single point of contact with the council to ease the flow of communication.

“Elaine works very closely with housing associations, parish councils and landowners, and she carries out a lot of promotional work,” said Wood. “She goes out to the parishes, helping them to understand what affordable housing is all about and how we can deliver affordable housing, particularly on exception sites.”

There’s a lot in the pipeline for Daventry at present. It is in the process of finalising its housing strategy for the next few years, for one thing; it is also working towards fulfilling its commitment to gypsies and travellers, and is just on the verge of launching its choice-based lettings schemes. This latter project is expected to come into force in April, with a sub-regional scheme run in partnership with Northampton Borough Council, following a couple of months later.

The new housing strategy presents five strands: housing which is accessible and affordable; homes that are sustainable and of a high design; sustainable and cohesive communities; housing for vulnerable people; and provision for an ageing population. In many respects, the new strategy represents a continuation of the old, and indeed many forthcoming activities will naturally bridge the old into the new.

“Within those five themes, we’ve tried to present what we have done already in terms of housing in the district, where we want to be in the next five years, and what we want to have achieved in that time,” said Varinder Bassan, senior policy officer. “We do a lot of work with empty homes within the district and we’ll be raising the profile of this over the next five years. We’ll also be looking to do a lot more work with older people, making sure that they are provided for – both the existing older population as well as the ‘up-and-coming’ older people.”

When it comes to providing for gypsies and travellers, the district has identified an accommodation need via the Northamptonshire Gypsy & Traveller Accommodation Assessment study, which it hopes to address by 2017. The means to best achieve this are under discussion with partners, the main issues is to identify potential residential sites, but what also needs to be considered is what services these sites may need, how to best manage them and what rent levels should apply. The council is also considering the pros and cons of managing the sites – is it best done by the council, or carried out by a partner RSL?

Daventry Council maintains a number of strategic working groups, focused on particular aspects of policy and delivery, and like all aspects of its housing and planning they very much work closely with members, so there is an understanding of the issue all the way into the heart of the council chambers.

One of these focuses on homelessness, overseeing the authority’s statutory duties in the area, and working closely with RSLs to help alleviate the problems. But above and beyond these duties, it is also working to tackle problems of ‘hidden homelessness’ and also do its bit to help those in mortgage difficulties that have arisen courtesy of the recession.

As Shaun Forde, homelessness policy officer, said: “We, like many other authorities, have a level of the [homeless] population that is hidden in the sense that they aren’t a priority group, for instance young men over the age of 18 without children, so we have set up working groups in order to help this group, along with other hidden groups and are finding ways to get them back into settled accommodation.”

Bringing the two strands of housing and planning has clearly reaped the dividends for this local authority and its partners.