Housing strategy consultation

Published Tuesday 7 March, 2023
Last updated on Tuesday 7 March, 2023

Swale Borough Council launches housing strategy consultation

Swale Borough Council has launched a consultation to get residents’ views on how the council will tackle major housing challenges for the next four years.

The council has published a draft housing, homelessness, and rough sleeping strategy, which sets out how the council’s housing-related services are performing and suggests what their priorities could be for the next four years.

The strategy sets out how the council would work to deliver affordable homes, prevent homelessness, improve conditions in private sector properties and create a more efficient housing options service.

Cllr Ben Martin, chair of the council’s housing and health committee, said:

“We’ve done a lot of work to improve our housing services in the last few years, but the increased cost of living and the impact of the pandemic is adding to the housing pressures local people face.

“That’s why we want to hear local people’s views about how we will deliver our housing-related services across the borough over the next five years.

“We’ve identified four priorities we want to focus our efforts on and have set out actions we think will make a difference in these areas.

"We need people to have a look at what we’re suggesting and let us know if they think these are appropriate, or what else we could do to improve people’s experience of housing in the borough.

“Everyone deserves a warm, safe place, to call home they can afford.”

Cllr Angela Harrison, vice chair of the committee, said:

“We know we have real issues with the cost of housing for local people, so we want to make sure we’re doing what we can to help local people access housing that they can afford.

“There’s been a lot of work done to support people at risk of homelessness, but the demand we are now seeing shows we need to do more.

“We also know that there are some, though thankfully not the vast majority, of landlords that are not doing enough to make sure their tenants are living in decent accommodation. We want to tackle these and help improve the quality of private housing stock.”

The consultation, including the draft strategy, is available at www.swale.gov.uk/hhrs and closes on Wednesday 17 May, 2023.