Major housing project for Scarborough borough gets thumbs up - but concerns remain

Scarborough Council’s cabinet has voted unanimously to approve a large-scale housing project that will see the authority work with a private developer.

The Better Homes Joint Venture will seek to tackle the “affordable homes crisis” facing the borough with estimates stating it will cost the authority £100,000 a year.

Approval of the plan means the council can proceed with the disposal of eight council sites that have been ringfenced for the project and can enter into contracts and legal agreements.

The eight sites are on Clarence Drive in Filey, Musham Bank in Eastfield, Sandybed Crescent and Pollard Gardens in Scarborough, Moor Lane in Newby, as well as California Road, Rievaulx Road, and Sandsend Road in Whitby

The 50:50 partnership between Scarborough Council and Lovell Partnerships Ltd – a subsidiary of the Morgan Sindall Group – has set out to build “more than 700 new homes over an initial 10-year period”, as part of a 30-year partnership.

At a meeting of the authority’s executive committee on Tuesday November 15, councillors agreed to form a new developer as a “vehicle” for the joint partnership.

It draws to a conclusion a bidding process that started in 2021 when the authority invited potential partners to take part in a joint venture to provide “more affordable, sustainable and higher quality homes in the borough”

Though members of the cabinet voted unanimously to approve the plans, councillors asked why the project cannot deliver 100 per cent affordable housing, as opposed to mixed social, affordable, and private provision.

Speaking at the meeting, Richard Bradley, director of the authority’s Better Homes Joint Venture said: “First and foremost, 100 per cent affordable housing on all of the sites may not be possible from a pure viability context.”

Mr Bradley added: “The mixed tenure approach with those sites, which have the element of sale on the higher value sites, actually contributes to the cross-subsidy model that we have, ie the reinvestment.”

Concerns have been raised about the time scale of developments as well as whether the project will get the green light from North Yorkshire County Council which still has to approve the plans.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Cllr Liz Colling, who chaired Tuesday’s cabinet meeting, said: “Because it’s complicated, not just what we are doing which is innovative, other councils have done something similar, but all the other districts have slightly different models.

“Some of them own their own council houses, they are stock holding, but what we are saying is we don’t have a solution, we’re not telling everyone you have to do this.

"We are saying this is one part of it because even through planning, you do still get some social and affordable housing.”

Councillors believe that North Yorkshire County Council will not make a decision on the project until next year.