Chorley Council to buy properties to house refugees and homeless

Chorley Council is set to buy a group of properties to house refugees from Afghanistan and anyone who finds themselves homeless in the borough.

The authority has been awarded a £654,000 government grant which it will use, in part, to purchase a trio of two or three-bedroomed dwellings for Afghans who have settled in Chorley.

The remainder of the cash will pay for the acquisition and conversion of a commercial block on Gillibrand Street, which will be turned into three homes that will act as temporary accommodation.

The money is coming from the latest £450m round of the Local Authority Housing Fund (LAHF), which is targeted at helping both Afghan refugees and the homeless.

In order to be eligible for one of the refugee properties, an individual must be part of the UK’s Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme who is unable to secure their own housing.

That programme was launched in 2022 with an aim to settle up to 20,000 Afghan refugees nationwide, prioritising those who assisted British military efforts in Afghanistan, as well as vulnerable people from the Taliban-run country, including women and girls at risk and members of minority groups.

Space within the council’s new temporary accommodation will be reserved for those residents to whom the borough authority owes a “homelessness duty”.

Cabinet member for homes and housing Terry Howarth told the meeting at which the plans were approved: “The Afghan refugee families have already gained the right to be in this country – they have got the right to residence [and]…the right to work.”

The refugee dwellings will be offered at an “affordable rent”, something Cllr Howarth said was the “advantage” of the houses being local authority owned.

Although councils have the final say over the homes they buy with their LAHF grant, government guidance is that they should aim to spend half of it on the purchase of brand new properties.

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