Housing policy seems confused

In the last two Gazettes you have published comment on the purchase of student housing in Parham Road Canterbury in July 2018. It is good to see some debate from the Labour and Conservative sides at last. Sadly we are very still very short on figures so I provide some which I produced at the time. The purchase price was said to have been £23 million which for 63 homes is £365,000 per house. It seems that only 61 were provided so the cost would be £377,000 each, seemingly not the £200,000 per unit stated in your edition of December 31. In the year 2017 the average price for a Canterbury house was £317,000 so the purchase price was 19% more than that. The average figure for terraced houses, which is more appropriate, was £300,000.

It is now said that there was an overspend of £1.1 million on the repair cost of the project, which works out at £18,000 per property. However we are given no total cost of repairs.

The lead councillor on housing, Joe Howes, has given us no more figures, merely saying that houses for those on lower incomes is needed [Letters, Gazette, January 7], which I’m sure we would all agree. He says that the income generated on that high purchase price “would cover the purchase price”. That

is not a concept that would be recognised by any accountant or economist so it would be helpful if he could set out the gross and net income figures.

It seems impossible that “social housing” at 60% of market rents or “affordable” at 80% would justify paying that inflated price. We are short of housing for lower income families because of years of selling them off by Tory and Labour councils and also because of the low percentage of such homes included in many of the new builds given consent by this council.

A recent application for 650 houses at Sturry with absolutely no affordable houses was supported by Planning Officers but fortunately refused by Planning Committee members. The Head of Planning was annoyed by this and we now have another application for the same site again with no affordable housing which officers are likely to push for again. The city council has a policy of 30% affordable in new schemes which it should stick to. As the plots are cheaper as part of the capture of land value increase, houses can be provided for a cost of about £150,000 making them properly affordable for user and provider. We hope planning committee members will stick to that policy and demand 30%.

The city council policy seems very confused.

Nick Blake

Leycroft Close, Canterbury