Councils invited to bid for housing project cash

The Local Government Association has invited councils to bid for cash to fund projects tackling the effects of the housing crisis in their area.

The Housing Advisers Programme, now in its third year, funds councils’ efforts to get expertise on housing delivery, planning matters and reducing homelessness.

The LGA has backed more than 100 councils in the past two years of the scheme and this year will focus on supporting a smaller number of larger housing projects.

Depending on the number of successful bids up to £50,000 will be awarded to each project to pay for professional advice on how services or partnerships can deliver more homes.

Lessons learned from projects will be shared with other councils, the LGA said.

Martin Tett, the LGA’s housing spokesman, said the country’s housing crisis was “forcing difficult choices on families, distorting places, hampering growth, and putting significant pressure on local services and council budgets”.

Tett said local government was at the heart of the solution.

“The Housing Advisers programme aims to help councils deliver local priorities and can be a valuable source of expertise to councils wishing to innovate and improve in their efforts to build more homes, reduce homelessness, and plan prosperous places and economies.

“It’s well worth councils who haven’t already done so looking at the programme and seeing how it can benefit them.”

Past projects that accessed LGA funding included Teignbridge district council’s efforts to find alternative approaches to calculating its affordable housing needs.

One of the outcomes of the programme for Teignbridge was speeding-up the process for dealing with applications, reducing the time taken in negotiating section 106 agreements and cutting the number of planning appeals.