Cheshire West and Chester Council Property strategy
The Council's 'Strategic Overview and Asset Management Plan' provides an overview of the Council's management of a wide range of property.
The Council's Cabinet agreed that consultation should be undertaken on the strategy, specifically with Parish and Town Council's and community groups. The consultation runs until 31 October and can be joined at:
There is also a Parish and Town Council workshop taking place on 11 October.
The consultation asks for feedback on the main themes of the strategy to inform any changes needed and priorities for the future property management.
The Council owns a wide range of property across the borough, that includes Country parks, museums, social housing, public toilets, community centres, offices, industrial units available for local businesses, depots for highways and recycling, farms and public open spaces.
Councillor Carol Gahan, Cabinet Member for Finance and Legal said:
This Strategy is about how the Council manages our land and buildings in the future. The consultation focusses on the assets that we hold for the delivery of our services such as depots for the waste and highways teams and offices for our staff and includes the key assets that our communities rely on such as our libraries, community and leisure centres. The consultation discusses some of the current and future challenges facing the management of our assets including financial constraints, the climate change, and the condition of some of our buildings. The strategy addresses the need to rationalise the portfolio to ensure that it delivers the current and future needs of residents.
An example of how the strategy is working can be seen with the opening of the Portal, in Ellesmere Port in May. At the same time offices in Chester and Winsford were renovated, to deliver modern, flexible offices. This has enabled the Council to reduce the need for twelve other buildings, reducing the occupied footprint by 245,000 sq ft making savings in energy and reduced carbon emissions.
The cost of housing is often out of the reach of many people. The Council developed a unique and innovative model where rather than receiving a capital receipt from developers for its land, the Council receives housing units in lieu of the value. In this way the Council was able to deliver the first council houses in the borough for over 20 years. In all cases, the value of the housing units exceeds the valuation of the land if the Council had simply sold the land to the developer.
This has led to a total of 2,342 (1,299 affordable) new homes being planned with over 900 already built. 230 new Council affordable homes have been provided for families in housing need and 2,500 construction jobs have been created.