A decision by Cornwall Council to sell off a number of its council homes that are proving too costly to repair is “not palatable” its head of housing has admitted.
The local authority’s Conservative Cabinet has ratified a change to policy regarding the threshold for the disposal of council homes where the cost of repairing them is greater than £50,000. The previous threshold was £100,000.
At a time when the council has to make millions of pounds worth of savings to balance the books, the council believes it is more economically efficient to sell them.
There are around 40 homes which would be sold under the new ruling, eight of which could be transferred for temporary accommodation, which is one of the biggest drains on the council’s expenditure.
Following the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday (November 13), Independent councillor Julian German said: “The delivery of council homes has fallen from 1,166 homes to just 674, the lowest in the history of Cornwall Council, and in comparative terms has fallen from being the top provider of affordable homes in the country under the last Independent led Cornwall Council, to now being ninth.
“In a further twist, the Conservative Cabinet took the decision to sell off more council homes. This is under the pretext that properties requiring more than £50,000 of repairs are not financially viable. No one in Cornwall has seen a sold council house not being viable for its new owners.”
The council’s portfolio holder for housing, Cllr Olly Monk, explained the decision. He told fellow councillors: “We often see empty properties which could have mundic or be a steel-framed property where the concrete is starting to blow on it. When we start estimating how much it’s going to cost the council to bring it up to a decent standard, it’s far in excess of what the private sector could do.
“A private owner is not constrained by some of the standards of work and compliance that we have to apply.”
He added: “When you start talking about repairing a property that’s worth about £50,000 – or £80,000 if it goes on to the open market, which some of these will – and you look at how much we have to spend, it’s simpler to sell that property and use the capital from it to buy a brand new property straight off the open market.
“Empty homes are not useful to anybody. It comes down to do we continue to have that property empty, do we spend an inordinate amount of money to try and address that property, constrained by the capacity we’ve got or do we simply sell off some of these properties?
"No one wants to sell off council properties to the private sector but most of these properties that get sold will be retained in the rental market.
“We cannot keep affording to flog these dead horses when they have structural issues or mundic. We have to make rational decisions. It’s not a palatable decision I know, but we have to make tough decisions around this.”
During debate Cllr Monk mentioned that he’d approached all of Cornwall’s six new MPs, who were elected in July, to discuss the housing crisis in Cornwall.
“So far only the MP for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) has engaged with me and had a meaningful conversation around anything to do with housing at all. The offer remains open to all the MPs.
"Apart from the odd bit of casework, none of them have actually sat down and had a meaningful conversation with me,” he added.
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