The York Conservative-led City of York Council has secured a government grant of £250,000 to improve council homes in The Groves. The investment project will look at widening the type of homes in The Groves through things like converting extra internal space, adding dormer conversions to traditional pitched roof flats, building extensions on to housing blocks and perhaps selling the larger Victorian terrace houses.
Cllr Sam Lisle, York’s executive member for housing and safer neighbourhoods, said: “This is an important boost to our ongoing investment in council-owned homes to ensure that our tenants have good quality homes and the right mix to tenures to meet current demand and help address tenants’ changing housing needs.”
The work could also see family and older people’s housing in the area separated and more bungalows built. It could even stretch to the creation self-contained studio flats to broaden the types of tenure and make sure tenants do not fall foul of housing benefit restrictions.
Council properties in the area are already earmarked for a roof replacement programme for 2018, so the grant will help fund more technical studies to plan this and to identify further regeneration like new lifts, looking at where blocks might be extended or regenerating under-used communal areas.