Council chiefs have revealed their plan for spending nearly £15 million raised through the sale of social housing.

Stoke-on-Trent City Council generated £3.36 million by selling 126 of its homes under the Right to Buy (RTB) scheme last year.

This will bring the council's pot of retained RTB receipts to £14.9 million, which it can spend on building new homes or buying replacement properties on a one-for-one basis. Cabinet members are now set to rubberstamp the decision to retain the receipts, and agree 'in principle' to the use of the funds on a raft of housing projects over the coming years – although individual schemes will need to be approve separately.

The report to cabinet sets out the importance of having a pipeline of viable housing schemes which RTB receipts can be spent on. If the money is not spent within five years, it has to be returned to the government, along with 'penalty interest'.

The council will use the funds on a raft of housing projects over the coming years (Nub News).

Since the 2012, the council has retained a total of £30.6 million in RTB receipts, of which £458,436 has been handed back to the government. And it expects to retain a further £12.8 million in RTB receipts over the next four years. The council is planning to spend around £1 million of RTB receipts this year, buying or building homes at Fegg Hayes, Fenton and Stoke.

In future years, the council plans to spend £22.7 million on two schemes at Wellfield Road in Bentilee, and Booth Street in Stoke, which could deliver 260 homes between them.

Councillor Chris Robinson, cabinet member for housing and planning, said: "We are committed to delivering more homes in the city and recognise that these homes need to be affordable, safe and decent. We want to empower our residents and give people more choice when it comes to deciding where they want to live.

"We are making significant progress in our work to improve our housing stock through our capital investment programme and, by agreeing to this additional investment, we will be able to ensure that everybody has a decent home to live in.

Cllr Chris Robinson is the cabinet member for housing and planning (Image supplied).

"It will also enable us to support other housing providers to buy and develop new homes in the city, too. We have recently taken on almost 40 homes at the new Hollington Grange development in Fegg Hayes where 157 homes have been built on the former Chatterley Whitfield Sports Ground, and this is a great example of what can be achieved."

Last month the government relaxed some of the rules around the use of RTB receipts, including allowing the receipts to be used to cover 100 per cent of eligible costs of projects – up from 50 per cent previously.

The council may have to £103,866 in RTB receipts to the government, plus £39,569 in interest, if the planned housing projects do not go ahead this year.

But the cabinet report says that additional acquistions are being identified, making use of the increased flexibility around RTB receipts, ensuring 'there is minimal risk of this occuring'.

The report: "The recommendation within this report to retain the receipt will enable the development team to bring forward projects within the pipeline to be funded via retained receipts. New pipeline projects will be presented for approval in due course to ensure that these retained receipts, plus future receipts can be spent, however the timing of these is crucial to spending RTB."

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