'Help to buy' scheme planned to tackle Rochdale's 'shocking' housing problem

Rochdale council is planning a ‘help to buy’ scheme to get people into their first home and bring down the borough’s ‘exceptionally high’ social housing waiting list. A ‘shocking’ new council report notes how there are more than 7,500 applications on the housing register.

And given current availability and the rate new homes are being built, the majority will ‘not be housed in the foreseeable future’. Demand on social housing is also likely to be further ramped up by the ‘evident cost of living crisis’, the document adds.

But the council is taking homelessness prevention and the Home Choice service - which allocates social housing in the borough - back ‘in-house’ from April. And bosses say they plan to devise a ‘help to buy’ scheme as part of a ‘housing solutions package’ once staff transfer over from Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH).

READ MORE : Housing association accused of doing 'nothing' for LGBTQ+ tenants in new 'three-year vision'

Councillors expressed dismay over the situation when the report was presented to a scrutiny committee meeting on Monday night, describing it as ‘shocking’ and ‘sad’.

Chair Coun Tom Besford questioned whether the authority could do more to get people on to the housing ladder. "It seems to me that the problem here for a lot of tenants is not that they can’t afford housing, they can’t afford the deposit for a house," he said.

Coun Besford noted that average rent of a two-bed home in Rochdale was £597.50 per month [as of July 2021], was ‘probably significantly more than a mortgage with a 10pc deposit’.

“Is there anything the local authorities can do, based on ‘help to buy’ schemes, to mitigate this?” he continued. "Because it feels those people who are most in need of housing are paying