Waltham Forest will also use £1.62m of government funding to bring 22 empty council homes back into use, reports Sebastian Mann, Local Democracy Reporter

Waltham Forest Council has agreed to spend more than £4million to purchase and refurbish 28 homes.

The council, like many in London, is navigating a “difficult housing crisis,” its leadership said during a cabinet meeting yesterday (1st October).

In March, the authority was awarded £6.57m by the Ministry of Housing – then the Department for Housing – to acquire up to 28 homes.

Five would be used for refugee resettlement, and 23 for general temporary accommodation.

The council’s own £4.11m would cover around 50% of the costs, it says. It will use the remaining £1.62m to bring 22 empty council homes back into use.

There are almost 1,200 Waltham Forest households currently living in temporary accommodation, the council says.

The figures continue to rise and the council is currently relying on expensive hotel accommodation, which is quickly draining its coffers.

Figures from March, produced by the London Assembly, showed that one child in every classroom across the capital was living in temporary accommodation.

Council leader Grace Williams said there was a “moral imperative to act” on housing.

She added the authority needed to be “relentless” in its pursuit for new homes and use “all the levers it has”.

During the same meeting, deputy leader Ahsan Khan confirmed the council’s homebuilding company, SixtyBricks, would enter dormancy this autumn.

Cllr Williams said it was due to “difficult market conditions” that the council needed to “look at delivering homes in a different way”.

A “dormant” company is one that is no longer trading and has no income.

The £1m remaining in the company’s cash balance will be returned to the council, and funds will be reserved to “offset any future liabilities”.

The council agreed to shelve the company in February after building 299 homes, including 188 council houses, through it in eight years. All have been sold or rented out, the council says.

SixtyBricks was intended to then build up to 226 homes in its second phase, using loans of up to £130m from the council.

This included 100 new homes at Church Lane Car Park in Leytonstone, 40 flats at Chingford Assembly Hall, and 23 flats in a vacant nursery in Vicarage Road, Leyton.

Since former leader Chris Robbins launched SixtyBricks in 2016, the property market had “changed significantly”. Building costs had increased, sales grew slowly, and borrowing became more expensive.

The homebuilder only developed land the council already owned and was partly funded using loans from the authority – at an interest rate of 6.5-8% per year.

In turn, Waltham Forest Council financed them at a profit by taking out low-rate government loans available to local authorities.

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