NNDC and Broadland Housing Association worked in partnership to mitigate the risk in delivering five rural exception housing sites rather than the traditional single format, resulting in the delivery of 63 affordable housing, cross subsidised with market housing.
At a glance
Executive summary
North Norfolk is a challenging district given the number of constraints when working to deliver affordable housing. NNDC and Broadland Housing Association worked in partnership to mitigate the risk in delivering five rural exception housing sites rather than the traditional single format. This partnership resulted in the delivery of 63 affordable housing, cross subsidised with market housing, using three higher value sites, to maximise the number of affordable homes. This was the first time this delivery route was used in England. The project was a finalist in the 2020 East of England RTPI Award for Planning Excellence.
Challenge and context
North Norfolk is a challenging area in which to build new housing with a number of constraints in planning terms (Area of Natural Beauty, landscaping etc), rising build costs, local opposition, County Council Highways expectations and finding willing landowners. There is a high affordable housing need (currently 2210 households on the housing list).
With reduced grant rates and rising costs in the area Broadland wanted to:
- Create a sustainable delivery model for the delivery for rural housing.
- Improve design within building projects.
- Work within the changes of the NPPF to maximise the use of exception site planning policy.
What we did
Broadland Housing Association formed a framework for the project, using a collaborative approach bringing together NNDC Strategic Housing Team and themselves, to use market housing sales to cross subsidy funding the affordable housing delivery.
The project used a combination of NNDC land and private landowners with the tenure mix created using local needs analysis. The key stage to the project was for Broadland to negotiate a single S106 across all five locations, allowing surplus from one village to help finance another which allowed a more strategic view to delivering all sites. This also allowed design to be considered and improved for each village.
The difference
The project has created a template for a further group of village developments based on the original methodology but now continues with individual S106 for ease. Due to rising build costs, it is now coupled with Homes England grant and NNDC S106 reserves to ensure that the quality and number of affordable homes continues to be delivered.
Lessons learned
Greater number of affordable homes are now coming forward given this successful model of cross subsidy model.
Contact
Anna Clarke (Community Housing Enabler)
Nicky Debbage (Housing Strategy and Delivery Manager)