Mid Devon Receives Funds for Council Homes

The Council’s ambitions to build more, high-quality council homes for Mid Devon communities has received a boost, with the announcement of more than a quarter of a million pounds of funding. 

Mid Devon District Council bid through the One Public Estate process and has secured £160,000 to support its modular housing scheme to be built at Shapland Place, Tiverton with a further £120,000 towards a similar scheme at St Andrews in Cullompton.

These two schemes represent the start of an ambitious £100million programme by the Council to redevelop underused sites in its estate to create new affordable homes.

Cllr Stuart Penny, Cabinet Member for Housing at Mid Devon, said: “This is great news for the expansion of our own council stock, which is a priority for this council. These two projects will provide homes for our communities which are modern and super energy efficient and are part of our long-term ambitions to improve housing across the district.”

Mid Devon Council is working in collaboration with modular house builder Zed Pods Ltd to deliver the 14 new homes. The site in Cullompton will provide 3 one bed and 3 two-bedroom net zero Carbon homes, each with their own car parking spaces. An additional 8 homes and 37 parking spaces are planned for development in Tiverton only a few 100 metres from the River Exe and town centre. The plans include a mixture of housing types, including 4 one bed, 3 two bed and 1 three-bedroom homes.

Both sites, which were previously occupied by garages and car parking, will be completed with triple glazing and solar panels, have their own private communal green space as well as separate storage for residents’ bins and bicycles. The developments are set to be carbon-neutral, making this one of the first social housing projects of this type within the UK and continuing the Councils’ ambitions towards becoming carbon neutral.

This is the first time Mid Devon has bid through the One Public Estate programme, which a partnership between the Office of Government Property in the Cabinet Office, the Local Government Association and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. It provides practical and technical support and funding for public sector partners to deliver ambitious property-led programmes in collaboration.

The funding is part of four projects in the county to develop affordable homes on council owned brownfield sites, which between them have been awarded just over £911,000 of government funding. The funding is a share of £35.9 million awarded to English councils in the first round of BLRF2 to enable the release of council brownfield land for housing.