Five more sites approved for council houses in Rotherham in £130m spend on affordable homes

Plans for new homes on council-owned sites have been approved for development this year and next as part of an additional £65 million investment for housing growth over the next five years.

The areas covered include sites in Treeton, Ravenfield, Thrybergh, East Herringthorpe and Wingfield.

The programme will bring the council’s total commitment to new council homes to £130 million.

Under the current building programme, 58 homes have been built on The Bellows site in Rawmarsh with a further 217 built across several sites in the borough.

Councillors also recently approved 171 new homes on three sites in the town centre as part of its regeneration.

Rotherham faces huge demand for council homes, while 18,000 have been sold since the Right to Buy scheme began in 1980.

Leader, Coun Chris Read, told a meeting of Rotherham's cabinet: "This is a really important step in identifying the next sites for what's a really ambitions housing programme for council housing an affordable housing.

"It took my breath away a little bit when I first saw the £131 million number, which does tell you something about the scale of the ambition to ensure that people can access high-quality, affordable housing, with a large part of that being direct provisions from the council."

Coun Dominic Beck said: "This is the first of the annual housing development reports.

"What the report does is set out how we're going to deliver headline figures set out on new home delivery."