Letter to the Editor: New homes will be substantially better but not substantially more expensive

Your article (Regeneration boss says housing association 'won't make a penny'), states that new homes (for resident leaseholders and freeholders) will be ‘substantially more expensive’ than their current properties.

Certainly the properties will be substantially better in terms of their design and construction and all new homes will have private outside space, but it is not the case that they will be substantially more expensive for existing resident freeholders and leaseholders to buy.

We will not know the value for each property type for each of the three neighbourhoods until we have prepared our final master plans and have a better understanding of the home types we need to include in each neighbourhood and how many additional homes we need to deliver in each neighbourhood.

Of course the council’s development framework consultation is ongoing at the moment and that will have a bearing on our final deliberations too.

So in summary, we will only know what the price of each property will be for existing leaseholders and freeholders in January when we present our final master plans as it is then that we can also present our financial offers to existing residents.

Our priority is to keep the existing communities together whether tenant, freeholder or leaseholder.

The financial offer we make to the residents will be worked out with their input to ensure people are encouraged to stay.