There is a significant shortage of affordable housing in Cornwall, and the Affordable Housing Team is dedicated to addressing this need. With strong support, they’ve been helping towns and parishes develop their own affordable housing schemes.
At a glance
What went in
Priority area addressed
Cornwall has a housing crisis and the challenge was to understand how as an affordable housing team we could support communities to deliver more affordable housing.
Budget/Resources
Utilising existing affordable housing staff and the Principle Rural Housing Enabler alongside community-led housing grants administered by the Council.
Other resource needed
Support from staff across the Council’s various departments such as Development Management, Highways, Property etc.
Timeframe to completion
Started in August 2022 and is ongoing.
What came out
- Prioritised the 213 parishes throughout Cornwall so that we could understand which Parishes had the most urgent housing need.
- Affordable Housing Officers/RHE engaged with 68 parishes.
- 43 sites have been identified that have potential for affordable housing delivery or are being supported through the development process.
- Closer working with Members and our Parish Councils and 12 Community Area Partnership (creation of CAP Affordable Housing Packs).
- Proactive work with colleagues supported across all relevant Council Services.
- Cornwall Housing Partnership Sites Group (RP Partners come together to discuss opportunities and issues) – Quarterly meetings are updated with the proactive enabling work.
- Developed an Early Stages Feasibility Grant Fund and so far have provided 11 grants.
- Eight Housing Needs Surveys undertaken (plus additional 2 being processed).
- Five members of the AH team gained accreditation as Community-led Housing Advisors (Confederation of Co-operative Housing).
- Developed and delivered a bi-monthly newsletter about Affordable Housing Matters – provided to Parish/Town Councils, Members, RPs, CLTs, colleagues.
Executive summary
It is widely recognised that there is a huge shortage of affordable housing for people in Cornwall. Determined to do everything that we could to address that need, the Affordable Housing Team have been widely supported to deliver a programme of enabling with towns/parishes which helps them to develop and deliver their own affordable housing schemes.
This work cannot be done in isolation and key to its success has been actively working across Council services, working closely with Members and Register Provider partners, developing better communication and introducing grants to enable early development.
Challenge and context
Cornwall has a population of over 550,000 residents with 213 Parishes. We became a Unitary Council in 2009, when the six Borough and District Councils and the County Council became Cornwall Council. Cornwall currently has over 23,000 people seeking affordable housing and who are registered through Cornwall Homechoice.
The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated an already difficult affordable housing situation in Cornwall. There was a significant demand on existing homes that housed local people to be converted into holiday lets and this was particularly high in Coastal areas. Cornwall’s Housing Register hit an all-time high and the Council declared Cornwall as officially in a Housing Crisis.
In August 2021 the Council released a press release and Councillor Olly Monk, who holds the portfolio for Housing and Planning stated how, in terms of Cornwall’s housing crisis, we are currently in 'a perfect storm''. Cornwall found itself in a position where people were moving to the county during the pandemic, many rental owners sold their homes to take advantage of high house prices and others converted long term rental homes into holiday lets. All these factors led to an increased shortage of homes to rent or buy.
There are 11 members of the Affordable Housing Team that work across the whole of Cornwall. As well as the planning consultee function and a homeownership service (for discount market sale and Council Shared Ownership homes), we work closely with housing providers, work proactively with parish and town councils and manage a programme of community-led housing.
The Team have always had a role in supporting and enabling our communities to bring forward affordable housing, but it was clear that with Cornwall in a housing crisis we needed to take greater action to find more ways in which delivery could be increased.
Identifying potential sites which could deliver more affordable homes in our rural areas and then finding ways to deliver those sites whether that is through a community-led approach or working with partners was considered a priority.
One of the most difficult challenges to delivery is finding suitable sites to build the homes on. So, knowing that local knowledge is key, we have worked proactively with town and parish councils and other community-led housing groups to jointly identify potential land and engage with local communities to enable sites to be brought forward for affordable homes. We have also worked with our colleagues in our property team to identify any potential council owned land which might be suitable for affordable housing development.
What we did
With 213 towns and parishes across Cornwall, the Rural Housing Enabler led the process of prioritising the areas with the most urgent housing need. The Team carried out an initial assessment looking at details such as of the number of people registered as being in housing need in each parish, the affordable housing delivery in recent years, existing housing stock, turnover of that stock, and the number of affordable homes currently available.
The team then made contact with those initial parishes and has continued to expand the number of parishes that we have been working with over the past few years. The Team has now worked closely with almost 70 parishes to offer support, and we are always encouraging other areas (through Parish Council meetings, local network meetings, newsletters etc) to contact us to see how we can support them.
Key to this work is the Rural Housing Enabler (RHE) who has successfully developed the proactive enabling programme and raised the profile of community-led housing throughout Cornwall. The RHE and the Affordable Housing team support rural communities with the delivery of their own developments which can be through setting up as a CLT or working with a partner organisation, they assist with identifying housing need, running community engagement events, unlocking potential sites, providing information and advice on funding, partners and delivery.
The RHE produced internal guides and templates for staff to utilise and also updated the Affordable Housing Toolkit and resources that is available to communities on our website.
The RHE also has a specific role of managing and supporting communities applying for the grants and loans that are available through the Council for this work. Having a dedicated post co-ordinating and managing this work has been fundamental to its success.
This work has created a significant level of interest and desire from communities across Cornwall to bring forward more rural affordable housing.
Proactive Enabling entails working with communities to help them to understand the need in their Parish for Affordable Housing. The diagram below sets this out.
The recognised key constraint to bringing forward more affordable housing delivery in our rural communities is that of finding deliverable sites, whether that is because of constraints of an area around geography, mining features, flooding, highways or simply because the landowners have too high expectations around value.
An important part of this programme has been developing and enhancing internal working relationships in particular with colleagues in services such as Property and Development Management. As a result of the programme improved communication with the property team has been established with regular meetings being held to discuss sites for disposal or opportunities for Affordable Housing. A number of sites that are now being developed are on Cornwall Council owned land. We have also established good working relationships with planning colleagues, gaining early informal advice on schemes that are coming through the programme. Understanding the planning constraints of a site early on in the process can help save a lot of wasted time and money in the long term.
Importantly, we have managed to dovetail this programme in with the work we undertake with Registered Providers, the Team manage the Cornwall Housing Partnership which is a group for Registered Providers working throughout Cornwall, where appropriate sites that have been identified through this process are now passed on to Cornwall Housing Partnership Sites Group as an opportunity.
The difference
This enabling work is adding significant value, with clear positive results in bringing forward more delivery and at a quicker pace. The proactive enabling work of the RHE and the wider Affordable Housing Team has facilitated a strong growth in the community-led sector throughout Cornwall in the last few years, which will ultimately enable more communities to build affordable homes that are truly community led.
Managed and supported by the RHE, the Affordable Housing Team have provided welcome support in finding sites, making contact with landowners, providing funding, linking groups with development partners etc.
This proactive enabling work of the team has been successful, with enablers making contact with 68 parishes; of these two thirds (43 Parishes) have identified at least one site to bring forward. As well as the sites that were identified and that are now being taken forward by our RP partners, Community Land Trusts in Cornwall have had six planning permission approvals, six pre-applications/PPAs submitted and a good number of groups are entering into HOTs/Options Agreements with landowners and progressing on to pre-application/planning application stage.
This enabling work alongside new and improved methods of regular communication such as the Affordable Housing Newsletter, Community Area Partnership Affordable Housing Information packs, are key to working with our communities to assist them in embracing the delivery of affordable housing in their area and importantly highlighting to them that building homes in their Parish is part of the answer to the housing crisis.
Lessons learned
The programme has highlighted that communities are hungry for Affordable Housing Delivery that is truly affordable and for local people. Every community is different and the approach needs to be tailored to each community’s needs. They all want the same outcome to have more affordable homes in their community, but the route in which they get to that end point is different with each scheme. Some communities will want to be involved every step of the way and set up a CLT, raise funding for the scheme, deliver and manage the scheme whereas other would be happy to identify a site but allow an RP to take forward the scheme.
Communication of information has become really important as we’ve moved through the programme. We found that as we supported communities with gaining a greater knowledge of affordable housing we have had more and better engagement from these communities. We provided information around helping communities to understand their own housing need, myth busting, advice around policy, planning, housing allocation, funding and much more.
We are continuing the programme and are currently looking at expanding this to look at a new tranche of parishes and identify any sites that have extant planning permission that might be stalled and which we could support to unlock.
Contact
Sarah Roberts, Principle Rural Housing Enabler