Decision details

On 11th April 2023 a decision was made to accept £3.04m of government Local Authority Housing Fund grant to obtain and refurbish property in order to provide sustainable housing for those unable to secure their own accommodation and are who here under specific schemes for people from Ukraine and Afghanistan. Also to fully approve an initial capital budget of £250k funded by this grant to initiate technical design work.

Initial technical design work and pre-application planning advice required to support a planning application to repurpose upper floors of three surplus commercial properties, has demonstrated that the time and cost impacts of conversion including achieving EPC Level C on these properties, places them at a high risk of failing to meet LAHF programme criteria. The forecast completion date of February 2025 places them outside the contracted programme timescale.

To remove three existing Council Commercial Estate properties at 15-16 and 18 Milsom Street from the LAHF programme and to authorise the Council through Aequus to make offers for suitable open market purchases to support the LAHF programme and, subject to meeting the business case criteria, progress to purchase.

Option 1 - remove these properties from the LAHF programme and find alternative properties on the open market that will allow us to meet the programme requirements.

Option 2 - Continue with work to repurpose the properties, with significant risk of failing to meet the LAHF programme requirements.

Option 3 - The scheme aims to provide 22 high quality and well managed homes with the potential to house up to 29 households. If we do nothing we will lose this opportunity.