ONE thousand new affordable homes will be built in Conwy county over the next three years, says the lead councillor for housing.
Conwy’s deputy leader Cllr Emily Owen is also the cabinet member for housing and made the promise at a full council meeting at the council’s Coed Pella HQ.
Speaking at a full council meeting, Cllr Owen claimed the authority had “drawn down” more housing grants than ever before to tackle the issue of affordable housing.
During a section of the meeting reserved for announcements, Cllr Owen told the chamber Conwy was working to improve homelessness, end bed-and-breakfasts use for those without a home, and build one thousand affordable homes.
“You’ll know that we’ve got an ambitious plan to end the use of bed and breakfasts for our homeless within a two-year period,” said Cllr Owen.
“There’s been lots of focus on support and how we are going to do that, and we’ve had a really good consultation going on with our people who are experiencing homelessness
“We’ve been out to 20 different sessions talking to them about what would have helped prevent being homeless and what other support we can offer so we can shape our services and our support around need and what they are needing at the moment.
“So that’s a really good piece of work that is ongoing, making sure we’ve had some good input there, and we also had the projection figures in. So as you’ll know over the last few years, we’ve drawn down the most ever housing grants we’ve ever had within Conwy Council, and as you’ll also know, there is then a bit of a lag from drawing grants down to houses because of planning and actually building and things.”
She added: “But it means the projections have come through to say over the next three years there will be over a thousand new homes coming into Conwy that are affordable homes, which is really good news and a massive improvement on what our delivery figures have been.”
