Affordable homes are let at least 20% below local market rents and social homes at around 50% of local rents for people on low incomes.
Plymouth’s cabinet member for organisational efficiency, Mark Lowry (Lab, Southway), said building homes was ” very very challenging” for any local authority at the moment.
He told councillors at the scrutiny board management meeting that despite government help with building “the reality of the situation is it is unaffordable to build a home in Plymouth, it costs more money to build a home than it actually does to sell it”.
Lowry added: “The differential is at least £50,000 so you won’t find anyone who wants to build a home in the city unless we as a council or somebody puts fifty grand on the table to assist.”
Andrew Crumplin (Reform UK, Moor View), who is a builder and site manager, said: “Everyone I know builds houses, it just seems like a problem for the council, I find it hard to believe that statement that you need to chuck £50,000 at a house to get a builder to build it.”
“We would be spending an extra four million on 80 homes at Bath Street and six million on Southway – that seems ludicrous.”
Daniel Steel (Lab, Plymstock Radford) told the meeting: “We look like we are quite off track to what we should be.”
A £33.5m scheme to build 135 affordable homes at Bath Street at Millbay, including 80 for social rent has started with a £14 million contribution from Homes England.
