£230m for Nottingham’s five-year housing programme

Nottingham City Council looks set to invest £230 million in a five-year investment programme in its housing stock, with energy efficiency at their centre.

The Housing Revenue Account (HRA) capital programme provides funds for improvements to properties, new build council housing and improvements to estates. The HRA, which is the council’s landlord account, will also need to fund improvements to make council homes warmer and more energy efficient, both in new builds and retrofitting of the current stock. With energy prices rising sharply, creating and investing in energy efficient homes is becoming increasingly important to help lower fuel bills.

The council capital programme, which aims to help improve the council’s current housing stock of 25,218 homes, includes new kitchens and bathrooms, energy efficient windows, solar panels and external wall insulation.

Additional home improvements include: upgrading around 2,500 heating, 1,100 of which are high efficiency boilers; upgrading existing fire alarm systems across 375 homes in low rise blocks; and delivering new, large-scale fencing, guttering, painting and concreting as part of the Decent Neighbourhoods programme, due to start shortly.

Nottingham City Council, along with its arms-length housing management company, Nottingham City Homes (NCH), has already built over 650 houses, with over 300 more new council homes planned or in the pipeline across Nottingham over the next two years, including at Bestwood and Clifton, where 144 new homes are already under construction.

Linda Woodings, Portfolio Holder for Planning and Housing at Nottingham City Council, said: “We understand that some council tenants, whose rents are not covered by housing support or universal credit, will be concerned about the increase, which is in line with the government’s recommendations.  

“However, we are still losing more homes through right to buy than we can replace with new ones and with increasing construction, maintenance and material costs following Brexit and the pandemic, we are facing growing financial challenges. Therefore, we have to increase rents in line with the guidance in order to be able to meet all of our long-term costs. Social rents remain well below market rents.

“Not increasing the rent would have a damaging impact on the council’s ability to build new homes and make energy efficient improvements, creating warmer homes, which ultimately will help to lower or lessen the impact of increasing fuel bills.”