Falkirk Council

The core purpose of the Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP) is to set out how investment in affordable housing will be directed over a five year period to achieve Local Housing Strategy (LHS) outcomes.

The SHIP shows how identified needs and priorities in relation to affordable housing will be tackled, with an emphasis on how projects will be delivered in practice taking into account the availability of resources, land supply, infrastructure constraints and so on.

While the SHIP focuses mainly on new housing provision by the Council's Registered Social Landlord (RSL) partners, it also requires to take account of any new council house building programmes which the local authority wishes to deliver.

In addition, the SHIP needs to address regeneration activity and issues relating to energy efficiency and sustainability.

Key issues to note from this year's SHIP are as follows:

• Research undertaken in 2007 indicated that there was an annual shortfall of 145 affordable homes across the Council area over the next ten years, with particular pressures in Polmont, Larbert, Stenhousemuir and the Rural North areas. A new Housing Need and Demand Assessment (HNDA) is currently being finalised and will provide new planning figures which will inform the next Local Housing Strategy (LHS). The new LHS will cover the period 2011-16 and will be published next autumn setting out the context for the 2012-17 and subsequent SHIPs.
• There is a clear need to continue the twin-track approach to increasing the provision of new affordable housing in the Council area by both the Council and RSLs. New homes can only be delivered where the Council and its development partners work together to achieve agreed aims. Work continues to try to address the difficult issues which can sometime arise in the implementation of agreed planning policies where there is local opposition to new housing development.
• This SHIP covers the Council's New Build Programme which aims to provide 120 new affordable rented homes over the period of the SHIP, at an estimated total cost of £12.07m. The Council has completed 12 new affordable homes this year as part of the Council's New Build Programme and a further 60 homes are currently under construction.
• The Council's core AHIP funding allocation for 2010-11 is £5.341m which has, to date, allowed the completion of 90 new affordable homes. A further 26 new homes are currently under construction and will be completed by the end of this financial year.
• A further 18 affordable homes have been delivered so far this year through the Mortgage to Rent scheme and the Open Market Shared Equity Pilot scheme.
• The Scottish Government's 2010-11 unit approval target is 56 new affordable homes comprising projects in Bridge Street, Bonnybridge, Overton Crescent, Redding and Bellsdyke Road, Larbert.
• This SHIP is based on a total core AHIP requirement of £22m over 5 years. This figure is derived from the 2010-11 AHIP allocation of £5.341m with resource planning assumptions based on a 25 per cent reduction over the first four years of the 2011-2016 SHIP.
• Allowing for the deduction of £1m required to deliver adaptations in RSL properties over the 5 years of the SHIP, it is assumed the residual AHIP resources available to deliver new affordable homes between 2011 and 2016 will be around £21m but this figure may be cut depending on the level of savings the Scottish Government requires to make from the AHIP.
• Based on an average grant requirement of £70k per unit for new RSL properties for rent, £21m could deliver approximately 300 new social rented homes over the 5 year period of the SHIP. However, as the grant requirement for low cost home ownership initiatives is lower, more new homes could be built if some of the allocation is used for this purpose. This issue will be the subject of consultation in the development of priorities for the 2011-16 LHS.
• A 12% allowance has been built into the programme to accommodate any slippage which might occur. This SHIP includes 16 partnership projects, comprising 352 dwellings delivered by 7 RSL partners. As well as built-in slippage to the main programme, the SHIP submission also includes a Shadow Programme of 15 potential projects comprising 346 affordable homes which could be brought forward if additional funding becomes available.
• In 2009-10 the Affordable Housing Investment Programme (AHIP) secured £9.134m of funding from the Scottish Government's which allowed the completion of 123 new affordable homes. A further 27 affordable homes were delivered through the Mortgage to Rent scheme (MTR) and the Open Market Shared Equity Pilot scheme (OMSE).
• Partnership work continues to address constraints that could impact on the successful delivery of the SHIP such as flood risks, infrastructure provision, contaminated land, access issues and so on.