Development to go ahead without affordable housing

Lagan Homes is building more than 60 homes in south Swindon

A housing developer will be allowed to complete a project without building any affordable homes after agreeing to give a council £720,000 for future social housing.

Lagan Homes has permission to build more than 60 houses in Swindon on a site off Marlborough Road next to Great Western Hospital.

In the original planning permission, 30% of houses were meant to be affordable, for social rent or shared ownership.

But a viability study showed that would be difficult, so Swindon Borough Council agreed that the developers could provide funding to build seven houses for social rent elsewhere.

Lagan Homes will give money to the council to build social housing elsewhere

After the study, the developer reduced the amount of social housing to 11% before the latest application to drop the requirement altogether, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

John Lagan, from Lagan Homes, said: “There has been something of a perfect storm of increased building costs and increased costs of getting finance that has hit the affordable housing market.

“We have spoken to 13 housing associations about building and managing the affordable homes but only one was interested and it wanted grant funding which isn’t available to houses built under section 106.

"There just isn’t the interest in a small development like this.”

The £720,000 will be used by the Swindon Housing Development Company, which is owned by the council.