Council’s £13m spree on 130 new homes

ONE of Scotland’s largest councils is to spend £13million buying 130 homes on the open market in a bid to solve a housing shortage.

North Lanarkshire Council has snapped up 66 homes from private sellers and has another 35 in the pipeline as it wants to increase the supply of social housing for rent in the area.

The local authority, which is Scotland’s largest council landlord, launched the Open Market purchase scheme in April after it was given the go-ahead by councillors.

It has set aside £13million to fund the first year of the project to increase the number of properties for people in the local authority area. Pamela Humphries, the council’s head of housing programme, said: ‘We initially set plans to buy 100 new homes in the first year but as we have progressed, we have managed to up that target to around 130 in the first year.

‘Since we announced this scheme, we have been inundated with people interested in taking part and we have bought many good properties which we can rent out to families and individuals.

‘We have set aside a budget of £13million in the first year, which enables us to buy homes on sale in the local housing market and bring them up to the high standards our tenants would expect to live in.’

The council said it would also target properties which will enable the council to take complete, or majority, ownership of blocks of flats, making communal repairs easier.

Homes purchased would meet the particular needs of households not currently available in the council stock, such as homes suitable for people with disabilities.

The authority has set a spending cap of £150,000 on each home and will concentrate on former council properties in ‘hard to sell’ areas. Miss Humphries added: ‘By purchasing quality homes on the open market, we can help meet people’s housing requirements and increase local housing supply.

‘The purchase of some of these homes also removes homes which have been considered a blight in communities as they may have been lying empty for some time.’

The open market purchase scheme is in addition to the council’s empty homes scheme. This scheme involves the council buying long-term privately owned empty houses and flats, refurbishing them and renting them out to tenants.

Latest national figures show there are 140,000 people on council house waiting lists and North Lanarkshire accounts for around 10 per cent of that figure.