The shortage of new homes in villages is difficult to combat if villages are to retain their character. But without homes being available young people leave and traditional elements of village life – pubs, shops, sometimes schools – are threatened.
One of the aims of Wiltshire Council’s business plan is to support and sustain rural communities and to further this they have come up with an innovative scheme for village housing.
Older people whose children have left home, often find themselves in houses that are too large for them. But they want to stay within their communities.
To help people downsize, Wiltshire Council is developing a scheme to provide bungalows so people can stay in their village and at the same time free up larger houses for local families who want to live in the village – and so help sustain it.
The Council will build the bungalows which can be bought with proceeds from the sale of a larger, say, four bedroom house in the village – so maintaining equity in their new two bedroom bungalow to pass on to their heirs.
If they prefer to rent their bungalow, the Council will remain the owner and will maintain the properties.
They have ring-fenced in their budget £2 million a year for the next ten years for the scheme. So far they are undertaking pilot schemes in two villages: one is already underway in Sherston (near Malmesbury) where the parish council is very keen on this new housing model.
As Wiltshire Council’s Associate Director, James Cawley, told MNO: “It’s a matter of working with parish councils and asking people if they want to downsize. Sometimes just knocking on doors and sometimes helping parish councils to devise a survey of possible homes in their area.”
Mr Cawley emphasised that the scheme will come under the Council’s new housing allocation policy which will offer houses first to people within a village, then from the next village and so on, only finally, as a last call, offering them to people from across the county. This comes into effect from September.
Using this new policy makes it quite clear the scheme’s priority is to serve village populations.
Parish Councils will also be best placed to identify possible land on which the bungalows can be built. Wiltshire Council has already identified six sites which it owns in rural communities and are suitable for bungalows.
When it is adopted, Wiltshire Council’s Core Strategy will allow housing development on the boundaries of smaller settlements – in conjunction with neighbourhood plans and local community consent. This could well provide land for these bungalows for older people.
There is not the economy of scale to make the provision of extra care homes in villages a feasible proposition. The ‘bungalow scheme’ could allow many people to remain in their villages and in homes that are more suitable for them as they grow older.
This also fits in well with the county Health and Wellbeing Board’s aim of looking after older people in their own homes for much longer – and keeping them out of hospitals.
It may also help solve the acute problem of the lack of affordable homes. In villages housing developments are generally too small to require developers to include affordable homes.
Last year 711 affordable homes were built in the county – with just six of them within the Marlborough Community Area.
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