Council proposes to borrow another £1m to buy eight more homes for refugees
Leicester City Council looks set to sign off on a further million pound loan to secure additional homes for Afghan and Ukrainian refugees. The news comes just weeks after the authority approved the borrowing of £3.7 million for an initial 27 homes under the Government’s Local Authority Housing Fund scheme.
The grants are aimed at ensuring people who arrived through the “humanitarian schemes” introduced by the Government for those fleeing Ukraine and Afghanistan are provided with “sufficient longer-term accommodation”. They are also intended to ease the wider pressures on council housing services which were increased by the need to find homes for the new arrivals.
This latest pot of cash will add a further eight homes to the final total, a council report reveals. In all, the 35 homes are expected to cost in the region of £8.63 million. However, £3.87 million of the money is coming from Government grants, with the local authority making up the difference.
Deputy city mayor for housing and neighbourhoods Elly Cutkelvin signed off on the original loan last month. She is now expected to make a decision on the additional borrowing in the coming weeks.
Council officers have recommended the council go ahead with the purchases. They said the grant funding represents a little less than 45 per cent of the total cost and this “compares favourably with other funding sources for affordable housing”.
They also previously said, in regards to the 27 homes purchase, the properties will provide the authority’s housing department “long-term income stream to repay the cost of borrowing ” and would “ make a positive contribution” to the department’s finances.
This latest phase came about after the Government approached the council in January to see if they could provide extra homes under the scheme, to which the authority said they could, the report added. The council said it submitted an “expression of interest” for the eight units and this “was successful”.
No information has been given on where the homes being considered for purchase are or what kinds of properties they are.