A debate has taken place over the amount of council housing in Reading, as whilst the council is building new homes, it is losing older ones to buyers.
Reading Borough Council is engaged in a multi-year programme of new council house building.
Council housing in Reading is allocated to people in the greatest housing need, including low‑income households, disabled residents, older people and others who cannot secure suitable housing on the open market.
More than 360 new council homes are coming down the pipeline for the council’s Local Authority Newbuild Housing Programme.
The programme totals 362 council homes, with 204 being subject to feasibility.
The biggest of these would be 190 homes for the Dee Park estate and 14 to replace the defunct Southcote Library.
The council’s policy committee approved updates to the £29.6 million programme at its latest meeting.
Victoria Higgins, the head of strategic housing, mentioned that the council won ‘silver’ in the housing category for the Local Government Chronicle awards.
Matt Yeo (Labour, Caversham), lead councillor for housing, said: “We’ve got 89 to be completed this financial year this year, 42 at Hexham Road in Redlands and another 17 at Amethyst Lane, and 30 in Dwyer Road in Southcote, and I’m hoping we’ll be going to visit those very soon.
“There’s a lot of high-quality builds here, and that’s one of the other reasons why we won this award, that these are built to Passivhaus standards, they are helping us meet our net zero targets, and also they keep bills lower for residents.”
But a debate has taken place over the total amount of council homes in Reading, as the number is actually going down.
Rob White, the leader of the Greens, the main opposition party on the council, pointed out that the number of council homes in the town has reduced by 38.
These have been lost to Right to Buy rules inaugurated by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in 1980.
Cllr White (Green, Park) said: “Green councillors do welcome the commitment to building more council homes, but we are concerned that the total number of council homes in Reading has again fallen for the last year reported, it’s gone down from 6,982 to 6,944 – so we’re building homes, great, but we’re not building them fast enough because we’re losing them through Right to Buy, which the council can’t control but we’ve got a Labour governmment, and the Labour government could be taking action.
“We’ve got an acute housing need, and residents are going to ask if we’re going quick enough.”
Going on the attack, Micky Leng (Labour, Whitley), the deputy leader of the council, said: “This is the first government in a generation that has committed to building
“Liberal Democrat controlled West Berkshire don’t build council houses, they don’t have any, the Tories we won’t even go there. Prime Minister David Cameron did more damage to council housing than any other Tory leader coming back to Right to Buy.”
Ultimately, the policy committee agreed to progress with the programme.
