Scarborough Council announces partnership on ‘£100k a year’ project for hundreds of affordable homes

Following a bidding process that started in January 2021 and whittled down applicants to a final three, Scarborough Borough Council has announced that it will embark on a major housing project with Lovell Partnerships Ltd.

The Better Homes Joint Venture is a 50/50 partnership between the council and the developer that plans to address the lack of affordable housing in the borough by creating “more than 700 new homes over an initial 10-year period”.

Draft minutes of an upcoming Scarborough Council scrutiny meeting state the developer has “committed to the repayment of the council’s £848,000 set up costs in full” while “an estimate of the additional costs the council would incur from these activities has been made at circa £100,000 per annum”.

Scarborough Council has said that the 30-year partnership will focus on delivering high-quality and sustainable affordable new homes with Lovell Partnerships, which was founded in 1971 and is a subsidiary of the Morgan Sindall Group.

In November 2021, the authority said the borough was “facing an affordable homes crisis and double the number [of homes] currently being built needs to be constructed between now and 2038 if demand is to be met. This means around 3,000 are needed in a 16-year period.”

Cllr Steve Siddons, leader of Scarborough Borough Council, said : “I am delighted and genuinely excited at the prospect of joining forces with a market leader of such experience, size and scale.

“This partnership could be transformative for not just our borough but across the new North Yorkshire geography, who have the same affordable housing challenges as we do and who will want to help tackle climate change”.

According to the council, the partnership will build new homes that are “up to 75 per cent more carbon efficient from day one”.

The authority’s lives and homes overview and scrutiny committee was meant to scrutinise how the selected partner had been secured at a meeting originally scheduled for Friday October 28.

However, the scrutiny committee’s meeting is now set to go ahead on November 4 before it proceeds to the council’s cabinet for approval on November 15.

According to a draft agenda, council officers are liaising with North Yorkshire County Council “to arrange for the matter to be considered by NYCC at the earliest opportunity”.

Speaking at a meeting of the scrutiny committee on July 20, Richard Bradley, the Better Homes project director said the council has already “ringfenced the disposal of eight land assets for the purpose of the joint venture”.

According to a 78-page report prepared for the upcoming scrutiny committee meeting: “The council has not sought to procure a fixed price contract with a third party developer for a series of costed and designed development schemes.”