At their meeting next week, Sefton Council Cabinet members will hear the Authority’s arm’s-length company Sandway Homes is delivering much-needed housing and contributing to the Council’s finances.

Just seven properties out of a total of 78 are left for sale on Sandway’s Hey Farm Gardens and Sandy Brook plots and 25 of the properties handed over have been affordable homes. Additionally, work is due to start soon at its Buckley Hill site, Molyneux Gardens, and a planning applications will be submitted next month  for a development at the former Bootle High School site in Netherton.

Affordable housing

Cllr Paulette Lappin, Sefton Council’s Cabinet Member for Regulatory, Compliance and Corporate Services said: “I am pleased to see that Sandway Homes is fulfilling the task it was established for, which is to develop much-needed new properties, including affordable housing, in Sefton.

“We have two sites almost completely sold with just a few remaining properties now available on the Hey Farm Gardens and Sandy Brook sites and are making progress on two new sites that will result in almost 120 more new, high-quality properties in the Borough.”

“And what’s more, Sandway has achieved all this in the face of the national and international economic factors such as inflation, rising interest rates and shortages of subcontractors and materials, which have been hampering the housebuilding sector across the country.”

Economic factors

Next week’s report points out that factors that have affected the UK’s economy since September last year, combined with effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the long legacy of COVID have affected housebuilding companies and their potential customers.

This has included contractors’ costs rising, a shortage of subcontractors after many went out of business during COVID and a lack of availability of materials.

 Next week’s report confirms and ratify the increase the Council’s existing peak Loan Agreement amount from £5.1 million to £8.3 million, which was agreed at December’s Cabinet meeting.

Positive contribution

Cllr Lappin continued: “This loan enables the company to progress its developments on site while dealing with these external factors that have seen some developers slowing or stopping construction to weather the storm, while at the same time generating a positive contribution to the Council’s finances through land returns, additional Council Tax receipts from the new properties and its inevitably reduced dividend.”

Visit the Sandway Homes website here.

You can use this link to find the details of next week’s Cabinet meeting.