Case Study: Affordable Housing
Atholl Estates
Estates traditionally provided houses for their estate workers but in recent decades, a changing pattern of rural employment and rising property ownership have meant that many rural estate properties have become available for rent in recent years. Throughout Scotland, estates offer these properties to local people, often at below market rents.
The growth in rental of estate properties is such that now estates in Scotland's are large scale providers of affordable housing. SEBG member estates let in excess of 3,000 affordable homes between them.
On Atholl estates around 300 of its houses have been made available to rent by people employed locally. The estate manages the properties and often liaises with Communities Scotland on significant renovation projects. Approximately ten properties are fully restored each year.
Atholl Estate works closely with the local housing forum partnership, set up in recent years by Perth and Kinross Council as part of its strategy to liaise with the private let sector for the provision of local housing. The partnership, which includes local community representatives, ensures that information on local housing need, planning and allocations policy is all shared.
Whilst there are regularly over 100 applicants on the Estate's waiting list for property, around 20 or so properties become available each year for let. There is no formal integration with the local authority housing waiting list but good links between both the local authority and local housing associations ensure the Estate's allocations accurately address the local housing needs.
Atholl Estates also stands ready to support local home ownership by being prepared to allocate estate land to local housing associations for housing development. Projects involving land zoned for housing are taken to the design stage in partnership with housing association and local community interests. Once planning and building control consents have been secured, the land is then sold on for the housing association to develop, honouring the estate's preference for prioritising local applicants.
Estate-driven local housing projects are a relatively new phenomenon, and a recently completed project on Atholl was one of the first to trial private sector involvement in Communities Scotland's Homestake project. A development project of 6 houses, designed in consultation with Communities Scotland for availability on the local market, identified one unit to enter the Homestake Scheme in partnership with Perthshire Housing Association. The exercise enabled both the Estate and PHA better to understand how the scheme can be employed in the rural market. Atholl Estates actively takes an interest in initiating such developments, becoming involved proactively rather than waiting to be invited to participate.
Buccleuch Equity Share
The Buccleuch family have a long history as progressive landowners who contribute to rural sustainability, whether it be to economic, environmental or social traditions. The Buccleuch Group is now looking to develop a method to tackle the growing need for sympathetically designed affordable rural housing for purchase within smaller rural communities. The Group has proposed a not-for-profit model through which a qualifying person can buy a percentage share in a house, with the Group holding the remaining share so ensuring the affordability of the house is maintained in perpetuity.
The model aims to provide rural housing options to those people in local employment, who have a family connection in an area and/or can contribute to sustaining the local rural economy. The project aims to support rather than compete with the work of registered social landlords by providing low cost home ownership solutions for those in need.
Sites would be identified for small numbers of affordable rural homes either by an approach to the Estate by local communities, or by the designation of estate land for housing within the Local Plan. Negotiations with local planning authorities would then be supported by housing needs surveys - completed by the housing charity Shelter in Dumfries and Galloway and the Rural Housing Service throughout the rest of Scotland. Once planning permission was granted and the values of houses confirmed, purchasers would be able to buy up to 75% of the property and receive full title to the house along with full home ownership responsibility. The Buccleuch Group would retain the remaining percentage, of no less than 25%, in a golden share and as a "sleeping partner" only.
The model looks to limit the sale of those houses developed under the proposal to those people with local family connections or those who can contribute to sustaining the local economy. People will be assessed in an open and fully accountable procedure.
On subsequent sales the Buccleuch Group would retain its share ensuring that a similar discount be made available to the next occupant of the house.
A right of pre-emption, instructed through planning agreements between the local planning authority and the Buccleuch Group, would also be used to ensure that only when the occupant chooses to sell the Buccleuch Group would have first right of refusal to buy the house. This aims to ensure that the house would not be lost from the "affordable" market.
In smaller rural communities there is often a limited amount of land allocated for housing through the local plan. This novel approach to affordable housing provision would be able to make use of the rural exception sites approach which has been used so successfully across rural England and the Scottish Borders Council unitary area. In devising this model, the Buccleuch Group is proposing a long term solution to the affordable housing problem in rural Scotland.
It is hoped that the first sale through "Buccleuch Equity Share" will be finalised towards the mid part of 2008.
