Councillor Chris Penberthy (Cabinet Member for Housing, Co-operative Development and Communities) introduced the item and highlighted:

a)    The Plan for Homes programme had delivered more than 7,500 new homes across Plymouth in the past nine years;

b)    The Plan for Homes detailed the Council’s priorities for ensuring that Plymouth had the housing to tackle the local effects of the national housing crisis;

c)    Reduction in delivery of affordable housing;

d)    Strong track record of achievement and innovation;

e)    Increasingly challenging housing delivery landscape;

f)     The plan aimed to deliver 5,000 new homes in the next five years;

g)    Climate action would be a cross cutting theme of Plan for Homes 4;

h)    Successes so far had included:

                      i.        7,581 homes delivered in all of which 1,980 were affordable;

                     ii.        48 Council sites released to developers for new homes;

                    iii.        £2.485 million of land release and brownfield land release funding from Government;

                    iv.        385 long term empty homes had been brought back into use;

                     v.        Partnered on the regeneration of Devonport, North Prospect and Barne Barton;

                    vi.        24 train and build service veteran homes;

                  vii.        33 wheelchair homes across various sites to meet high demand for accessible homes;

                 viii.        Worked with PEC (Plymouth Energy Community) and Livewest to deliver 40 energiesprong net zero carbon homes in King’s Tamerton;

                   ix.        They were close to completing on the first Council-built housing project for 40 years;

i)     In recent years new and affordable housing delivery in Plymouth had reduced to record low levels;

j)     Impact of national approaches to investment and taxation for private landlords;

k)    As of January 2024, 8,597 households were on the Devon Home Choice register, of which 1,351 were in a high banding of priority need, and 1365 had accessibility needs;

l)     In the past five years, the number of social housing lets had reduced by 36%;

m)  In 2023/24 there had been an average of 173 homelessness applications per month;

n)    There 342 households in temporary accommodation at the time of the meeting, of which 167 were families;

o)    Plan for Homes 4 would accelerate existing activity as well as bring forward new initiatives to focus action;

p)    Six housing themes had been identified for action:

                      i.        Affordable housing;

                     ii.        Market housing;

                    iii.        Private rented housing;

                    iv.        Partnerships;

                     v.        Supported and specialist housing;

                    vi.        Climate action.

Supported by Matt Garratt (Service Director for Community Connections) and Neil Mawson (Housing Delivery Manager), in response to questions the following was discussed:

q)    Long term empty homes often had a different set of circumstances and required different action plans involving different approaches such as enforcement action and/or financial support;

r)    At the time of the meeting there were just over 800 empty homes (empty for longer than 6 months);

s)     Two CPOs would go to Cabinet in March 2024 relating to homes that had been empty for more than 10 years;

t)     The team worked with partners to bring empty homes back into use;

u)    Bungalows were land heavy, and did not maximise housing delivery, but some bungalow provision was included in some schemes across the city;

v)    Joint Local Plan identified the city centre as a housing development area and there might be opportunities for older residents to relocate to these, close to amenities;

w)   A large number of areas identified for housing were for a small amount of homes;

x)    Each housing site was looked at individually with regards to mitigation for anti-social behaviour;

y)    There were areas across the city that had high numbers of Airbnb’s, which was impacting housing, and this needed national government regulation;

z)    Taxation and regulation on the private rental sector was needed to improve the sector.

The Committee agreed to:

1.    Note the report.