A Yorkshire council has rejected calls for it to contribute towards the cost of affordable homes.
The call on Tory-led North Yorkshire County Council comes after Conservative peer and chairman of the Local Government Association Lord Porter said “council housing is one of the biggest and most important services that councils deliver”, and their provision affected the cost of every other local authority service.
He said: “If a house isn’t safe, secure and decent, education would be more expensive, crime and disorder would be more expensive and social care would be more expensive, so it goes to the heart of everything councils do.”
Cllr Griffiths told a full meeting of the authority when the council’s housebuilding company Brierley Homes began making profits, about 20 per cent of it should be used to support the provision of social housing.
He said: “The council does have a duty, in our opinion, to promote and support high quality housing provision.”
The meeting was told the authority’s director of public health had recently advocated improving housing as a way of tackling poverty across the county and had recommended that the authority develop a coordinated rural strategy with borough and district councils to highlight needs including affordable housing.
Cllr Griffiths said he was disappointed that when the council’s corporate and partnerships scrutiny committee investigated the proposed measure, it had concluded the county did not have a statutory duty for affordable housing and had not understood what was being asked.
Cllr Webber said North Yorkshire was languishing near the bottom of the national league table for social housing building, with just ten built in his district of Harrogate last year.
However, Conservative members said despite having secured more than £157m in savings since the start of austerity, the council still had to find a further £40.3m in the next three years, representing an overall reduction of nearly 40 per cent in its spending power since 2011.
They said any future profits from Brierley Homes, one of seven companies which form its trading arm the Brierley Group, should instead be used to pay for the increasing cost of paying for adult social care and children’s services.
Scrutiny committee chairman Councillor Derek Bastiman said his committee had fully understood the motion and agreed there was a shortage of affordable housing throughout the county.
He said: “Yes we have a responsibility as a county council, there’s no two ways about it.
“We will review this in 12 months time, but the decision is the correct one at this moment in time.”
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