One of the UK's top holiday destinations has some of the worst housing in the country, it has been revealed. Calls have been made to bring council properties in Cornwall back up the scratch, particularly in terms of the age of the buildings, with 'cold and damp' environments.
Cornwall Council owns around 10,300 homes which are managed by its own company Cornwall Housing Limited. Many of the homes are said to be in a poor state and one council officer admits the council has some of the worst housing stock in the country, CornwallLive reports.
Mike Owen, landlord services manager for Cornwall Council, laid bare the state of the homes at a recent meeting of the council’s economic growth and development overview and scrutiny committee. He said: “The housing stock is not in great shape, it is very damp, very cold and very old. Compared to many local authorities we are in the bottom quartile for the quality of our stock.”
Mr Owen said this year the council has allocated £24million for improvements to its homes but said that it probably needs £100m to fill the gaps in work required to bring the properties up to a “decent” standard. However, councillors heard the council had managed to meet compliance in a number of areas for council properties following a highly critical report which found that hundreds of properties had not been adequately tested and passed requirements in relation to services such as gas and electric.
The council had now caught up with this work but was still behind on providing five-year certificates for properties. It was explained around 180 properties a month come to the end of their five-year certificate and the council was employing more contractors to help meet the backlog as well as carrying out the required works on those properties added to the list.
Independent councillor Tim Dwelly said the council should be considering the regeneration of its council housing, rebuilding those homes which are no longer of a decent standard and then seeking to make money out of some of the land which could be invested into council housing. He said that as the council owned the land already there would be no issue with having to acquire land which would take out one of the major obstacles for building new council housing.
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Cllr Dwelly said it was a “failure of this council” that it had not been investing to improve the current housing stock and bring it up to a decent standard. He called for “redesigning areas so that people get decent new homes, so that money is made to use other bits of that land to cover that cost”.
He added: “It is normal regeneration and it happens in other parts of the country but we don’t do anything here in Cornwall.” The committee voted unanimously in favour of noting the report and calling for the council to consider regeneration schemes to provide decent replacement homes for local people in Cornwall which would improve the council’s housing stock.
