Richmond Council is considering introducing special affordable housing schemes for key workers.

At last night's Adult Social Services, Health and Housing Committee (Wednesday, September 9) officers said that the coronavirus pandemic highlighted the importance of key worker accommodation that is close to where people are employed.

They said many key workers in London were accommodated on a temporary basis in hotel and student accommodation closer to their place of work during the pandemic.

Councillors approved the recommendations for officers to provide "bespoke marketing plans to key workers on particular schemes", and encouraging key workers to take them up.

Officers said that when considering new building applications they "will also consider, where appropriate in terms of location and nearby facilities, forms of affordable housing appropriate for key worker housing".

It was suggested that marketing plans would include agreeing "targeted and direct marketing to organisations who would largely employ key workers, including the local council itself, health services and potentially local residential care facilities and schools, given the clear benefit of encouraging low cost renting and purchase local to where key workers work."

Ian Ruegg, head of housing enabling and projects at Richmond Council, told the committee: "There are a couple of schemes that we're looking at at the moment which we think given their location may be ideally suited towards key worker provision.

"Clearly, you know, some key workers just want to rent because they want the ability to either move or change jobs.

"But some do want to settle down roots in the borough, and our view is that making a recommendation in the report to potentially have bespoke schemes that would prioritise key workers for sale properties, is something that we would very much like to do and move forward with in the next couple of years."

Officers argued that this kind of scheme was preferable to continuing with the shared ownership scheme.

Mr Ruegg said the council was not progressing with the shared ownership scheme "due to current market conditions and the fact that in soft market testing we've had very low interest from housing associations to progress that scheme."

Instead the council hopes to use housing capital programme grant funding to help housing providers buy sites to be converted into more houses and lower rental levels on new build properties.

It is hoped this will act as an incentive for people under-occupying council homes to downsize and release family sized council homes to be re-let.

The council wants to also explore the feasibility of acquiring more properties to address the demand for temporary accommodation.

Affordable homes delivery

The report into affordable housing in the borough showed there were 4,467 people on the housing lists.

In 2019/20 the council's planning service said 30 affordable homes were finished at the Avenue Centre, Teddington, and Broom Road, Teddington, both with Richmond Housing Partnership.

But there is "a significant upturn on starts and site completions in the next two financial years".

From 2021/22 to 2022/23 more than 180 new affordable homes are set to be finished.

The report said that in the next ten years there is the potential to deliver more than 1,000 affordable homes within the borough.

"This is an improving position in terms of the forecasts, estimates and building the pipeline," it said.

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