The housing secretary, Sajid Javid, is facing a legal challenge after he approved a 700-home housing scheme by the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, which includes just 4% affordable housing. It estimates it needs an extra 15,000 affordable homes in the next 15 years, but Javid backed a scheme with just 27 affordable homes. Across England, the number of affordable homes delivered by the so-called section 106 agreements with developers halved from 32,000 in 2008-09 to 16,000 in 2015-16, according to analysis by Oxford Brookes University. Manchester council to publish files used to bypass affordable housing quotas Read more“If we can’t build affordable housing in outer London where can we build it?” said Meenakshi Sharma, a co-founder of Ilford Noise, which has branded the amount of affordable housing in the Sainsbury’s scheme “ridiculous and insulting”. It suggested that a clause which states that “if viability were to improve, the affordable housing offer would improve proportionately” and could lead to more cheaper homes than the 4%.

Source: The Guardian March 23, 2018 17:48 UTC