Salford launches council-owned affordable housing arm

Salford City Council has handed over the first homes under its housing arm Dérive, which has been set up with £2m of Section 106 money to try and tackle the city’s housing crisis.

Dérive purchased the homes at Riverbank View in Charleston off plan from Keepmoat Homes. The scheme is part of a wider 430 home development by Keepmoat, where 86 of the homes are affordable.

Great Places Housing Group has purchased an additional 43, and Dérive is set to buy the remaining 23 affordable homes when the final stage of the development takes place.

The first keys were handed over to the first 20 houses in September, with more set to become available soon.

Salford City Mayor Paul Dennett said: “I am so proud that we have been able to provide brand new affordable homes for local people to live in.

“We set up Dérive behind the scenes at the town hall in 2017 to help tackle the housing crisis. The reality is in Salford we have 6,614 people on our housing list, a five percent increase on last year, with 51 bids for every home advertised. We know these homes will not solve the problem of the shortage of affordable homes, but we need to help local people.”

Cllr John Merry, a director at Dérive, said: “This is just the beginning of the story of Dérive; a local success story and one that will be copied nationally. In the absence of government support we are doing things our own way and providing affordable homes for local people. Other local authorities are contacting us to see how we brought the plans to reality.

“We bought these homes off the shelf but the plan for the future is to build our own homes as the company grows.”