To mark Rural Housing Week, Chief Executive Steve Warran reflects on White Horse Housing Association’s mission
THIS week is Rural Housing Week – the national celebration of the many social and economic benefits of affordable housing to rural communities.
Here at White Horse Housing Association the week is an opportunity to reflect on the work we do with rural communities to provide affordable, sustainable homes.
We work with community land trusts, parish council, developers and a number of other stakeholders to help communities provide the housing they need. We also campaign on their behalf when the need arises.
We wrote to Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner about Nutrient Neutrality regulations that are adding an extra financial burden to developments and making them unviable. We quoted the example of a project for six two and three-bedroomed homes in Knighton Road, Broad Chalke, near Salisbury, for rental and shared ownership, in partnership with the Broad Chalke Community Land Trust, which has taken eight years to get off the ground.
Our bold housebuilding programme continues to provide the houses rural communities need, whether they are the ten passivehaus homes built at Hook Hollow in Seen Cleeve, the seven affordable homes at Newland Homes’ Primrose View development in Worton, near Devizes or innovative use of a former meeting room at Kilmersdon which has been converted into a beautiful two-bedroom home.
Because our homes are allocated to people with local connections wherever possible, it means local communities retain the people who will work in and use its local businesses so that they remain strong and vibrant.
We are also proud of the work we do to keep our tenants safe, healthy and happy in stable, settled communities. We ensure we give the people who live in our homes the best service. That extends to supporting them where and when they need it. We are helping tenants through the cost of living crisis thanks to a £30,000 grant from Wiltshire Council for its Discretionary Support Fund.
Last year that support included help with rent, utility bills, food and shopping vouchers, school uniforms and other essential household items for 302 households – 67 per cent of all the association’s homes.
The support we were able to provide has also benefitted the housing association. We have managed to help tenants continue to keep paying their rent even though they are going through difficult times, which means we have far lower percentage of people in arrears than ever before.
We have helped our residents enjoy cheaper energy bills thanks to aprogramme of solar panel installation. We have invested more than £88,000 in installing Solar PV, which use the photovoltaic effect to convert sunlight directly into electricity, at ten homes in Kilmersdon. The programme follows work last year to install the panels as 15 homes in Ammerdown Terrace in the village.
We are also there when our residents need us. When long-term tenant Chris Olive of Codford lost mobility in three of her limbs after she suffered a stroke she found it impossible to live near a bus garage because the noise disturbed her. We helped her move to a quiet home next door to a nature reserve in the village.
She told us: “It is really peaceful and it has made a big difference to my recovery.”
Our housing officers are always looking out for tenants on their regular visits to our schemes. When Tracy Crook noticed a bench at a scheme in Marlborough was in poor repair she set about getting it replaced. Now the 16 older residents at 10, The Green have somewhere comfortable and shady to enjoy the warmer weather.
Rural Housing week is important because it gives a chance to bang the drum for providers like us who strive to keep our small towns, villages and hamlets vibrant by providing the homes they need, where they need them.
We want to continue our programme of housebuilding and are pushing for the government’s new and very generous £39 billion Affordable Housing Programme to have a percentage of grant funding ‘ring-fenced’ for rural housing schemes. It is important that it is recognised that they are more expensive to build and that the nutrient issue is more likely to cause delays and add extra costs.
We are in our 41st year here at White Horse and while we continue to grow our number of homes we want to build new partnerships across Wiltshire, Swindon and Somerset so that we deliver long into the future.