350 new council homes for Dudley in £40m plan
Around 350 new council homes will be built in Dudley under plans worth £40million, council bosses have announced.
Dudley Council is looking at developing sites around the borough during the next five years.
Cabinet members will be asked to approve plans which will see £15.6million invested over the next three years to get the scheme off the ground.
A number of suitable sites have already been identified, including former garage sites and the former archives building on Mount Pleasant Street in Coseley.The former Wren's Nest Estate Office has also been earmarked for housing along with a site in Beech Road, Kingswinford.
To help fund the scheme, council bosses will look to borrow £6.2million through the Local Growth Fund to contribute towards budget.
The council will then look to add a further £11.5 million into the new build budget in 2018/19 and in total spend £40.6million in total over the next five years.
Councillor Gaye Partridge, cabinet member for housing, said: "Having the flexibility to borrow additional funding puts us in a strong position to continue to expand our successful new build programme and maximise development opportunities in the borough. Many of the schemes we are looking to develop are relatively small but together they will make a big difference in the number of homes we have available to rent.
"As we have done with previous developments, we will be writing to residents living near the sites we hope to develop immediately, to ensure they are fully informed about our proposals."
If proposals are approved, the council will look to apply for planning permission to develop the schemes.
It comes as work to refurbish thousands of existing council homes across the borough in a £15 million project continues.
Money is being spent upgrading kitchens and bathrooms, repairing roofs, rewiring and installing new central heating.
Empty homes, which need major repair work to enable them to be re-let, will also be brought up to scratch so they can be rented out again to tenants. It is hoped that this will help to reduce the waiting list for properties in the borough.
The scheme has been welcomed by chairman of Dudley Federation of Tenants and Residents Associations, Martin Smith, who said he was pleased that money was being spent on improving empty properties to help meet the demand for homes in the borough.
