England's largest provider of affordable rural housing has hit out at the Housing Corporation for funding only one-fifth of its development schemes this year.
The Rural Housing Trust bid for 59 schemes worth £21m in the approved development programme for 2003/4.

Forty-five of its bids – submitted through development arm the English Rural Housing Association – were turned down. The corporation gave the go-ahead to £3.3m-worth of projects.

Moira Constable, trust chief executive, said: "The funding situation is absolute chaos. A lot of people have given up on rural housing because of the difficulties of getting funding."

The trust, which built 114 of the 975 homes in small villages funded by the Housing Corporation in 2001/2, hoped some of the 45 unfunded schemes would be taken up by local authorities.

However, with the abolition of local authority social housing grant earlier this year, the schemes are now on hold until transitional funding is announced in July.

The corporation's target is to build 1600 affordable homes in rural settlements in 2003/4. Under the Communities Plan, it must provide 3500 affordable homes in settlements below 3000 people between 2004/5 and 2005/6.

A corporation spokeswoman said: "We divide up allocations according to regional priorities and every region has a rural problem.

"The trust is an excellent organisation but there will always be a surplus of schemes in certain areas and we must achieve a regional balance."

n Kennet council in Wiltshire has won the planning inspectorate's support for its one-for-one homes policy. Inspector Robin Muers described Kennett's target of 50% affordable housing in all new developments as "pragmatic".

Source

Housing Today