Letter from North Warwickshire's Paul Roberts
Letter from North Warwickshire- Paul Roberts
North Warwickshire Borough Council are becoming actively involved in the re-launch of the Rural Housing Website and feel that Rural Housing Week from 12th to 18thMarch is an ideal time for that re-launch and for us to be able to share ideas of how we can utilise the promotion of this website.
At North Warwickshire, we are looking to run a presentation with one of our development partners on 15th March for Parish Councils to try and negate some of the stigmas of affordable housing and what partnerships have been developed in other areas between parish councils, local authorities and developers.
With all of the changes affecting Housing at the moment such as Welfare Reform which will hit rural areas significantly as we already have issues with lack of access to transport and services, it will certainly be beneficial to us to share our experiences of how we are setting up to deal with this and how other rural authorities are gearing up for the changes.
We also have the production of the Tenancy Policy which needs to be in place for April 2012 and the Tenancy Strategy that needs to be effective from January 2013 – how are we all getting on with this and how are affordable rents affecting us in relation to future developments.
Is anyone else having developers now approaching them to get out of their affordable housing contributions quoting the new flexibility within the National Planning Framework in regards to exception sites? We currently have two sites going through this process and it would be interesting to share experiences with others. How is the current economic climate affecting your development programme?
These are issues that we are discussing within our office and I am sure that you are too, so why not use the website to debate, share and help each other with our experiences.
Paul Roberts
Housing Strategy and Development Officer
North Warwickshire Borough Council.
