York Council fail to spend £1.2m of their affordable housing fund

More than £1.2m allocated for building affordable homes in York has been sent back to the government because the council did not spend the money.

A Freedom of Information (FOI) request by Cllr Michael Pavlovic has revealed that over the past 15 months £1.2m that could have been spent on affordable housing has been sent back to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

NewStart has been sent a copy of the FOI request by Mr Pavlovic.

The £1.2m fund was collected through the Right to Buy receipts, which is money that comes from the sale of social housing and is provided to councils by the government to build affordable homes in an area.

In May this year, research by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government revealed that York is in a housing crisis, with the number of long-term vacant homes in the city on the rise.

The number of vacant homes has risen from 359 in 2017 to 527 in 2018, this is the fifth-highest increase in the UK.

According to YorkPress, at a council meeting, Mr. Pavlovic said: ‘The right to buy system is restrictive, however, the least you expect from an effective administration is to utilise the money the council gets from selling off its social housing to replace it with new social housing.’

‘Instead, York loses £1.2m of our money back to the government at the same time as the Liberal Democrats are saying that we are inadequately funded.’

‘The problem is £1.2m will be a drop in the ocean compared with what the council will lose in the years to come through a lack of focus and commitment to new, genuinely affordable housing that’s so desperately needed in York.’

In related news, the Conservative government has so far failed to deliver any of the 200,000 starter homes it promised to build by 2020, according to an official watchdog.

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