Aberdeenshire Council has revealed plans to tackle the region’s housing crisis by creating more than 2,500 affordable homes by 2022.
Councillors will be asked next week to get behind an action plan to create 2,516 properties throughout key towns in Aberdeenshire in the next six years.
The cost of delivering the affordable homes, outlined in the draft strategic housing investment plan (Ship), has been estimated as £135million.
The local authority has highlighted that roughly £95million of the total could be secured through the Scottish Government’s resource planning assumptions.
However, the council has yet to identify where £40million of grant funding will be sourced to bring the ambitious project to fruition.
Fraserburgh, Peterhead, Banchory, Ellon, Inverurie, Westhill, Stonehaven, Blackburn, Newtonhill and Portlethen have all been identified as high priorities for the delivery of affordable homes.
These will encompass social rent, mid-market rent and low-cost shared equity accommodation.
The plan is for 314 homes to be given the go-ahead between 2016 and 2017, a further 495 from 2017 to 2018, 458 between 2018 and 2019, 380 from 2019 to 2020, 430 from 2020 to 2021 and 439 in the following year.
There are some 14,000 people on the local authority’s waiting list for council housing.
Chairwoman of the council’s social work and housing committee, SNP councillor Anne Allan, said: “The council has ambitious plans to increase the supply of affordable homes. It will help to reduce our waiting lists and provide much needed homes in Aberdeenshire.
“The government has given the money to do it. We can’t do it without their funding. It is really needed.”
However the leader of the council’s Conservative group, Jim Gifford, said: “The strategy is not the problem, it’s delivering it. They do get built in dribs and drabs.
“The ambition has always been there, it is how you deliver it. We have a strategy and land allocation, the fault is always missing the cash to do anything about it.”
Through council policy, developers are asked either to provide or contribute to affordable housing provision within any proposed developments.
Director of infrastructure services for the council, Stephen Archer, warned the build rate for affordable housing was “intrinsically linked” to the economy.
He added the decline of the oil and gas industry had “impacted upon” the north-east’s housing market.
And he stated this had led to “a reduction in house sales transactions, and house prices as well as average private rents”.
Mr Archer added: “Likewise, the number of new build completions within the private sector has fallen within Aberdeenshire during 2014-15 and 2015-16.”
