Decisions

The Council to date has successfully delivered homes across Round 1, 2 and 3 of the Local Authority Housing Fund Programme.

This has included delivery of 41 homes, exceeding a combined target of 38 homes across three prior rounds of funding.

Following Announcement of a 4^th Funding Round in late 2025, a positive Expression of Interest was submitted to the LAHF, indicating that the Council were interested in entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for further housing delivery.

This Favourable Expression of Interest is based on the standing commitment from the council to make 4 refugee homes available annually in the City (Ref 25/14/HSC).

The Cabinet Member for Housing agreed to:

1.    Delegate Authority to the Section 151 Officer to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to allow for the Round 4 payment of allocated funding to the Council.

2.    Approve that the delivery of accommodation to cater for recent humanitarian schemes identified within this second round of LAHF funding be delivered as part of the Councils 2022-2032 New Build Housing Programme.

3.    Approve that an indicative budget of £2,000,000 be drawn down in 2026/27 from the sum already ear-marked and approved for investment in new homes, to cover the costs associated with delivering 4 homes to serve as longer term accommodation, catering for the eligible cohort as defined in Part 4, and to recognise grant funding of £924,072 towards this expenditure. Following the meeting of this need the properties delivered will become general needs housing held within council stock.

4.    Authorise the Acting Chief Property Surveyor to approve the purchase of open market properties into council stock to serve as housing for the eligible cohort as defined in 4.2, subject to consultation with the Director of Communities and the Chief Financial Officer.

The Greater Cambridge housing trajectory is used by the Councils to calculate their housing land supply and to show anticipated housing delivery against their housing requirement in the adopted Local Plans. The housing trajectory and housing land supply calculations are required to be updated annually. The new five year period starts on 1 April 2026, and therefore calculations for this period (2026-2031) need to be agreed and published.

An alternative option would be to not publish the Greater Cambridge Housing Trajectory and Housing Land Supply Report. However, national planning policy and guidance requires all local planning authorities with an adopted plan of more than five years old to identify and update annually a supply of specific deliverable sites sufficient to deliver a minimum of five years’ worth of housing against their local housing need (from the standard method). A new housing trajectory is required to establish the Greater Cambridge housing land supply for the purposes of making planning decisions.

A link to the webpage can be found here: Monitoring delivery and land use in Greater Cambridge

The Cabinet Member for Planning and Transport approved:

a.    the Greater Cambridge Housing Trajectory and Housing Land Supply Report to be published on the Councils’ shared planning service website.

b.    to delegate any further minor editing changes to the Greater Cambridge Housing Trajectory and Housing Land Supply Report to the Joint Director for Planning where they are technical matters.