You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Landlords urge new North East mayor to help them increase 6,500-home target
A coalition of North East of England landlords has called on the region’s incoming mayor to help them go “further and faster” in housebuilding plans and increase the current target of 6,500 new homes.
The North East Housing Partnership (NEHP), which represents 17 of the region’s biggest housing associations and councils, said it believed there was scope to boost the target, with the right political backing.
The North East Mayoral Combined Authority (NEMCA) will become fully operational next month, when the inaugural election for a mayor takes place. NEMCA will replace both the North East Combined Authority and the North of Tyne Combined Authority.
READ MORE
The NEHP’s members are planning to deliver at least 6,500 homes over the mayor’s first term, which will last four years.
However, in a new prospectus, the group said: “We will work with the combined authority to develop a realistic stretch target for the development of new affordable homes that recognises the huge levels of unmet demand in the region.”
When the NEHP launched last November, more than 40,000 households in the North East were reportedly on social housing waiting lists.
The incoming mayor will have more control over transport, housing and skills, under the latest government trailblazer devolution deal, signed last month.
The NEHP called on the new authority to work with it to create a “strategic plan” to deliver on placemaking, housing development and regeneration ambitions, with “an explicit focus on the region’s affordable housing need”.
The group also urged the authority to use land assembly and compulsory purchase powers in the devolution agreement to line up sites suitable for affordable housebuilding and regeneration.
The NEHP also wants the authority to help it engage with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and Homes England. It wants to be involved in a “direct relationship with government advisors and policy-makers, so that we can present a collective voice to influence change on behalf of the region”, according to the prospectus.
Writing in the prospectus, Paul Fiddaman, the NEHP’s chair and chief executive of Karbon Homes, said housing can be a “strategic catalyst for economic and social transformation” in the region through its partnership with the new combined authority.
The group’s 17 landlord members own and manage more than 214,000 homes, comprising around one in six households in the mayoral combined authority area.
The other areas of focus for the group are net zero and sustainability, employability and social inclusion, and health, care and homelessness.
The NEHP’s members are: Believe Housing, Bernicia, Castles and Coasts, Durham Aged Mineworkers’ Homes Association, Gateshead Council, Gentoo, Home Group, Johnnie Johnson Housing, Karbon Homes, Livin, North Star, North Tyneside Council, Northumberland County Council, South Tyneside Homes, Thirteen, Tyne Housing, and Your Homes Newcastle on behalf of Newcastle City Council.
