Leicester City Council bid to spend £26m to cut housing wait list

The council is planning to buy predominantly one-bedroom properties

A city council is aiming to spend £26.6m buying homes in an effort to reduce the number of people on the housing waiting list.

The property deal will see Leicester City Council acquire 371 homes from the private sector.

They are predominantly one-bedroom properties, made up of a mixture of bedsits, studios and one-bedroom flats.

Most of the homes are occupied but the authority said it expected a relatively high turnover of tenants.

The homes are being bought with money from a £100m pot of cash set aside by the council specifically to boost its housing stock.

The tenants of the occupied properties will be asked to sign new leases with the authority.

'Commercial sensitivity'

A spokesperson for the council said the deal meant there would be significantly more of this property type to offer people on the housing register in the future.

The council has not said where in Leicester the houses are located and added that it could not reveal any more information about the deal "at this time due to commercial sensitivity".

Nigel Porter, leader of the opposition Liberal Democrat party on the Labour-led council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the focus on one-bedroom properties concerned him.

"I think really the desire from most people is for affordable homes for families, not these bedsits," he said.

There are 2,308 applicants waiting for one-bedroom homes in the city.

There are 1,986 households waiting for two-bedroom properties, 1,379 waiting for three-beds and 693 waiting for four beds or more.

A council spokesperson said: "Our wider acquisitions strategy is aiming to address this need, and of the 525 properties purchased since 2019, 470 are two-bed or above."

City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said the shortfall of council homes in the city was in part due to the government's Right to Buy scheme.

The rents from the houses, which are currently occupied, are expected to help boost the council's income.