More council houses should be built to tackle the housing shortage – and now councillors want to borrow money so construction can start.

They’ve asked Kirklees Council’s chief executive Adrian Lythgo to lobby the government to be allowed to borrow the money to tackle the shortage, especially as the population in Kirklees is rising faster than even Leeds.

A full Council debate saw rare unity among all parties to do more to reduce the 6,794-strong waiting list for a council house.

The deal would see Kirklees access the unused borrowing limits of other local authorities to build new homes.

They’d also like the cap on borrowing to be removed so councils can borrow against future rental income for the new homes, predicting it will release £50bn of investment in affordable housing over time.

Clr Andrew Marchington, Lib Dem deputy leader, said: “Everybody needs somewhere to live and the council could take control to meet the housing needs of the 400,000-plus people living in this borough.”

A Conservative amendment submitted by Clr Liz Smaje, which added to the Lib Dem motion, won unity which saw all councillors accept there are not enough council houses of varying sizes available and they agreed the private rental was too high and costs the council more in housing benefit.

But there was some divide between councillors with some blaming government schemes.

The pressures on the council have grown too as council leader Clr David Sheard revealed new data that Kirklees’ population grew by 8.7% between 2001 and 2011, which was higher than Leeds’ at 5.1% and Wakefield which grew by 3.4%.

“The size of the problem we’ve got means we have a deficit of affordable homes by 1,457 per year,” Clr Sheard said.

“We need to also talk about what is affordable, because I bet we’d all agree a builder knocking 20% off the price will still not be affordable to many of our residents.”

Clr Andrew Cooper, Green and Valley Independent leader, opposed the government’s Right to Buy scheme which in just 12 months saw Kirklees forced to sell 110 council homes at a collective £4m discount to tenants. He said this was depleting the housing stock.

Conservative deputy leader Clr David Hall said: “I don’t think there will be many villages in Kirklees that don’t need housing of some kind in order to get the public’s support for a Local Plan (that will allocate land for housing) they must be consulted.”

Clr Peter McBride, Cabinet member for Place, said Kirklees had recently brought forward 600 Homes for Life and 125 properties that were previously empty.

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