REDBRIDGE: Council still not providing enough affordable homes (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

REDBRIDGE: Council still not providing enough affordable homes

4:59pm Friday 19th March 2010 in

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THE COUNCIL is still failing to provide enough affordable homes, according to new figures from England's leading housing charity.

Figures released today by Shelter show that Redbridge currently has 13,969 households waiting for affordable housing, which at the current rate would take 32.41 years to clear.

Independent experts consulted by the charity say that Redbridge needs to build 999 affordable homes while last year only 171 were provided – just 40 percent of the requirement, which puts Redbridge in ninth in a league table of all 33 boroughs and 51st out of 323 councils in England.

On average, 403 affordable homes were provided in each of the last three years, which met the council's plans but came up short against the annual level required.

The data also shows that someone would have to earn £53,502 – nearly twice the average salary in the borough of £28,567 – to buy an average-priced property, priced at £241,500.

A spokeswoman for Redbridge Council said: “We are working hard to deliver more affordable homes to Redbridge and recognise the need for more social housing properties in the borough.

“This year we expect to deliver around 226 additional social housing properties in partnership with registered social landlords and are also encouraging existing tenants, through a range of incentives, to move to smaller homes to free larger homes for families.

“We are also helping to ease the overcrowding for tenants on our transfer list through a loft conversion and extensions programme and will continue to explore how we can develop small housing schemes on existing underused housing sites.”