Find out about the vision and approach we will take to improve the delivery, affordability and quality of housing.
A home is special to everyone and directly contributes to good health, wellbeing, and life achievement. Having a place to call home is one of life’s main goals. It offers warmth and shelter; and is the place where we feel safe and secure; a place to shape family.
Known as the English Riviera, Torbay comprises of three towns: Torquay, Paignton, and Brixham. Torbay has a population of c. 139,324, (62,992 households) and has an increasingly skilled workforce; increasing numbers of small and micro businesses; and a large catchment population. The recent investment in the A380 South Devon link road, directly connecting Torbay with the M5 at Exeter, has significantly reduced travel times locally and regionally making the Torbay area an increasingly attractive place to live and work.
It is a place of huge ambition, and we want it to be the best place for children to grow, for people to live and work and for residents to fulfil their ambitions today and for many years to come.
However, Torbay is facing a housing crisis. There is a shortage of new housing supply and particularly affordable housing.
This strategy sets the vision and approach we will take through our leadership; and by working with partners to ‘improve the delivery, affordability and quality of housing’.
We have the foundations in place to build more affordable homes through our urban and town regeneration plans; our housing company TorVista and the Torbay Strategic Housing Board.
By working with our partners, we will achieve more, giving more families a home and more children the best possible start in life.
We will prioritise brownfield locations in our towns to reduce the impact on the climate and endeavour to protect our natural environment and continue to seek new potential sites. We will create jobs and investment to support inclusive economic growth and make safe homes for residents and their families.
Whilst the council and its partners face many significant challenges, we are determined to provide appropriate and affordable homes, particularly for those with the greatest need.
We recognise the challenges of providing new affordable homes in the current economic conditions and the climate challenge.
Separate to this Housing Strategy an Action Plan will be developed to deliver our vision for housing in Torbay. The Action Plan will be an agile document, which we will used to monitor progress and it will be overseen by a cross-directorate Housing Delivery Group.
The council has put the foundations in place to kick start delivery of affordable homes in Torbay, as set out in our Community and Corporate Plan objective to ‘Improve the delivery, affordability and quality of housing’
We will ensure we put our residents and clients first; we continue to tackle climate change and we work in partnership to achieve better outcomes. We will focus on preventing and alleviating homelessness and we will continue to do everything we can to make sure our residents are treated fairly.
We are taking action to improve supply:
We know that, for our residents:
In Torbay:
Whilst accepting that there are significant challenges in providing decent homes for all our residents it is important to recognise that there are opportunities that can help us achieve this, including:
We are co-ordinating infrastructure improvements to support economic and town centre regeneration including increasing the supply of new homes.
Housing needs for Torbay have been objectively assessed in accordance with National Planning Policy Framework guidance, which, taking into account local policy added targets for employment growth, estimate that 615 new homes are required to be provided per year over the Local Plan period. However, as part of the Examination of the Torbay Local Plan, this figure was reduced to 495 homes per year to reflect environmental constraints in Torbay.
Consequently, the adopted Torbay Local Plan 2012-2030 identifies land for the delivery of around 8,900 new homes over the plan period and we are reviewing our current Local Plan.
A balanced housing market is essential to sustainable communities, but this will not be achieved without the right level of new housing development, across all tenures. As well as providing desperately needed new homes, house building also delivers substantial benefits and better facilities for the wider community. The affordability and environmental sustainability of homes will be crucial factors in getting the balance right between homes, jobs, the green environment and protecting the climate.
We already know from our community led neighbourhood plans, that protecting the natural environment of Torbay is a priority; along with providing more affordable homes; reducing the impact of climate change and creating a sustainable economy. It will be necessary to strike a balance between competing priorities.
There is little appetite for green field development despite the level of additional homes required. However, we need to find more sites to meet future demand. So, we need to be bold, innovative, and creative, in the delivering of those additional homes.
The current economic backdrop provides challenges for us all, including housebuilders and registered providers.
The English Riviera Destination management plan 2022-2030 to make Torbay the UK’s premier visitor destination and help boost the local economy was approved at Council in August 2022. The new plan sets out the interventions that can help propel the English Riviera forward, building on the strengths of the destination and the opportunities to achieve a more sustainable and resilient destination.
There has been a huge increase in demand for available properties, both rented and for home ownership. This has pushed up local prices and rents, making it much more difficult for households to afford. Rents are now well above the Housing Benefit rates, and we are seeing an increasing number of households at risk of homelessness.
Providing access to affordable housing is key to the growth of key sectors such as tourism, fishing, hi-tec and medical & health care, creative and digital technologies.
We need to continue to attract and retain our workforce in Torbay and to meet the gap created by vacancies outstripping availability in our local workforce. This will support growth, reduce levels of deprivation and enable our residents to thrive and reach their economic potential
Families on Housing Benefit are struggling to afford private rents and the Council continues to lobby government on Local Housing Allowance rates to reflect the challenging rental market specific to Torbay.
Additionally, since the energy price cap was lifted at the beginning of 2022, we have seen heating and electricity costs rise by over 50%, which has come alongside increases in the cost of food, taxes and other everyday expenses.
Whilst accepting that there are significant challenges in providing decent homes for all our residents it is important to recognise that there are opportunities that can help us achieve this, including:
We are co-ordinating infrastructure improvements to support economic and town centre regeneration including increasing the supply of new homes
The housing vision for Torbay is to:
Improve the delivery, affordability and quality of housing
To achieve this vision, we will:
Our housing priorities are:
Our cross-cutting principles:
These aspirations are underpinned by our community and corporate visions:
Within each priority we have identified key areas of work that we believe will directly contribute to the overall sense of community health and wellbeing in Torbay.
We will:
This is important because:
We want local households to have access to quality housing that they can afford in a range of tenures. Open market housing is the main route to securing the delivery of affordable housing via S106 planning obligations. However, affordable housing can also be provided using Government grants and the Council’s assets, including land. The majority of this delivery is focused in urban areas, yet we recognise the need for smaller development in our less urban communities.
Homes built for rent by registered providers are the only type of homes that remain affordable for the majority of low-income households in Torbay. Traditionally, homes let on social rents are around 60% of the local market rent, but in 2010 the government introduced a new ‘affordable rent’ at rents on new homes of up to 80% of market rent levels.
Since 2016, we have delivered an average of 339 market homes each year, 59 (17%) of which have been affordable. At the current trajectory, with no additional greenfield allocation, Torbay is likely to only develop up to 50 affordable units a year through the Section 106 developer contributions. To meet the total need on the Housing Register with new builds alone would take 32 years.
Our strategy proposes a mix of Homes England grant and local housing investment, such as Council land and assets, with a view to establishing two third affordable homes for rent and one third for low cost ownership. We will also strive to maximise energy efficiency, making our homes more affordable to heat and run.
Torbay Council and our NHS partners want to increase independent living; allowing people receiving social care and support to have a greater choice and control over how, where and with whom they live. Whilst we are commissioning 72 units of extra care for people to live well for longer in a home of their own, there is more to do.
There is also an urgent need to create housing stock that provides independent living and move-on accommodation options for our care experienced young people.
To improve housing supply, we will:
We will work with our partners to increase supply:
To understand future needs/demand, we will:
We will:
This is important because:
Housing has a key role to play in health and wellbeing. The poor condition of a property can negatively affect the physical and mental health of our residents. Similarly, some people’s physical health needs, particularly for older residents, can restrict their ability to live an independent life without some adaptations to the home.
The expansion of the private rented sector has focused attention on the need to improve conditions in this tenure. The English Housing Survey (EHS) estimates that in 2019, 23% of these homes did not meet the Decent Home Standard. This compares with 18% of owner-occupied and 12% of social-rented homes.
The housing conditions in the private rented sector are worse than for any other, so making sure that the quality and standard of the private rented sector is a priority for us. We also focus much of our work in this sector because tenants have little, or no control over getting remedial works carried out, so we use all the tools available to take action against poor standards.
The main enforcement issues identified relate to poor heating, risk of fire, damp and mould and falls. The Housing Standards Team identified and remedied 578 housing hazards last year, resulting in a significant cost saving to the NHS and wider society.
A key theme running through our plans is a commitment to become carbon neutral. The carbon emissions from our area will fall as our homes and businesses become more energy efficient. The widespread reliance on gas as an energy source will mean few households will be immune from rising bills. However, homes with poor fuel efficiency will be hit hardest by energy price rises. Households who live in a property they own or rent from a registered provider have the least likelihood of being fuel poor at 8% and 19% respectively. However, households living in privately rented accommodation are most likely to be fuel poor (25%).
The scale of the issues facing the private rented sector are such that the answer does not lie with regulation alone. We must create the right environment to encourage self-compliance by working alongside landlords, property agents and landlord associations.
To improve housing quality, we will:
We will:
This is important because:
Homelessness has a serious and harmful effect on those who experience it. Our approach is to act at the earliest opportunity, before individuals, or families lose their home. We are developing a separate homelessness and rough sleeping strategy that will be published during the life of this strategy.
Our primary focus is upon helping households to remain in their own home, provided that it is safe and suitable for them to do so. There are a number of in-house services available to help households remain in their homes, including: money advice, mediation and partnership work to tackle harassment and domestic abuse. We must also be mindful to work with partners to help us improve our support offer, for example, our voluntary and community groups, who are the eyes and ears of the community. We will take the opportunity to work closer to better understand how they can assist and support our work, as well as listen to what is happening at a local level.
It is not always appropriate for people to remain in their existing home and sometimes it is not possible to prevent homelessness. Over recent years we have seen a steady rise in demand for temporary accommodation, with many households placed in increasingly costly and sometimes unsuitable accommodation. This is having a significant impact on Council budgets.
Due to the low provision of social homes and new build affordable homes Torbay is reliant upon the private rented sector to meet its homelessness duties. However, recent rental increases have pushed this type of accommodation beyond the reach of low-income households, particularly for families. Additionally, some landlords are converting to the holiday market, both permanently, and across the summer months.
Three quarters of homeless households are re-housed in the private rented sector, more than twice the national average. However, as tenancies in this sector are less secure than other tenure and can create a repeating cycle of homelessness.
The theme throughout this strategy is to make sure that the entire system is working to prevent all forms of homelessness, but also to work across the Council, and with partners to deliver more affordable homes, and work with the private rented sector to promote longer, more secure tenancies.
To improve housing support, we will:
We will measure our success through the following indicators