Shropshire Council to buy 10 homes for refugee families with government help
Shropshire Council will purchase 10 homes to support refugee families in the county, after a proposal was approved by councillors.
The local authority is being given £1.2 million from the Government towards the housing – and at the authority's meeting on Thursday, members agreed to provide £1.42m towards the purchases.
Presenting the report on the plan, Councillor Dean Carroll said that when no longer needed to support refugees, the homes would be used for county residents.
Under the agreement the council will have to buy the homes by March 29 next year.
Councillor Carroll said that nine of the homes would initially be allocated to Afghan refugee households, with the remaining home used for temporary accommodation for homeless refugee families.
The portfolio holder was asked if the council would be looking across the county for locations to buy the homes, to which he responded yes.
The breakdown of the funding arrangement will see the council provide £0.45m of Section 106 commuted sums - received from developers - along with prudential borrowing on rental income of up to £0.97m.
The government funding is the second round of the Local Authority Housing Fund – which has provided £500m for 2022-23 and 2023-24 to support selected local authorities in England in buying homes to help a number of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees.
The first round provided money towards the council buying 30 properties for the scheme – which it says it is in the process of "currently acquiring".
The report, which was approved by the council, concluded: "Given the pressures on the council surrounding its homelessness duties, and that when the initial need of providing Afghan refugees a home, subsequent lettings can be used to help meet the council’s wider housing and homelessness pressures, it would seem pragmatic to accept the full allocation of capital funding to acquire the target number of homes and use best endeavours to deliver."
