Preston agrees terms for first council homes in decades
With Horrocks Mill on the back burner, the local authority has switched plans to make its social housing debut with 18 residences on an undisclosed development north of the city.
These will be the first council homes in more than 20 years in Preston, which had sold its social housing stock to Community Gateway Association 2005.
Preston City Council secured its registered social housing provider status last month and has committed £5m to acquiring social homes over the next two years.
Initially, the city council’s first council homes were set to be part of Onward Homes’ Horrocks Mill project.
A memorandum of understanding was agreed between the two back in 2024 for the city council to acquire 20 of the 380 homes to be built as part of the scheme.
However, not much has progressed with Horrocks Mill since city councillors voted to grant it planning permission in 2023. The city council confirmed it was still in talks with Onward regarding acquiring homes on this project. Onward has said that plans for Horrocks Mill will be further decided based on the level of funding available for the scheme from the Social and Affordable Homes Programme. The registered provider is moving forward with its plans for a nearby site though, the demolition of Avenham towers.
In the meantime, the city council is ready to start growing its council housing stock. On Thursday, it agreed heads of terms with a developer to purchase 18 homes on a large housing development north of the city. These residences will be delivered in phases, with the scheme set to complete in 2028.
The name of the developer and development have not been revealed, with the city council citing commercial reasons. Hive Land and Planning advised the city council on the deal in its role as the local authority’s specialist housing consultant.
Hive director Nick Thompson called the heads of terms agreement as an “important milestone”.
“Re-establishing the authority as a registered provider and securing an initial pipeline of housing stock are important stages and we look forward to continuing our relationship, using our knowledge and experience to bring the development forward,” he said.
Preston City Council Leader Cllr Matthew Brown teased that there would be more acquisitions to come.
“I am delighted to be one step closer to realising our long-standing goal of owning our own council homes and contributing directly towards tackling homelessness and meeting local housing needs,” he said.
“It is our ambition to progress at least one more scheme to deliver a substantial number of new council homes, if possible, through a new unitary arrangement,” he said.
How is the Council allowed to hide it’s agreement behind the Commercial confidentiality when it’s taxpayers money being spent. The deal is obviously not commercially viable because if it were the council would be shouting out loud about what a great deal they had negotiated. This is just a way of justifying more unnecessary developments whilst pretending to be concerned about the disadvantaged.
By Anonymous
Because it’s a commercial development. But they’re delivering much-needed social housing as well. Still, there’s nothing that can’t be complained about.
By Always someone
I’m curious as to what’s happening with the horrocks mill site as they are still demolitioning the old flats and have turned the old mill site into a car park, and from the artists impression it suggests they would just be building apartments that THEY literally condemned and claimed would cost to much to refurbish and modernise but surelt that would be cheaper if all their doing is building more apartments cause you have the demolition costs, the planning costs and then the building costs on top.
It strikes me as onward wanting to appear to be doing something good when in actual fact their probably going f to be building homes that are probably shared ownership and private ownership with very little in the way of social housing especially if the council are getting a set amount for their own properly portfolio of social housing stock.
When will onward come clean about the amount of houses/apartments their building will actually be social housing with fair and affordable rent?
By Merlin76uk