A GOVERNMENT grant scheme is handing more than £250,000 to York for the revamping of council homes in The Groves.

The money is coming because City of York Council bid successfully to a Government estate regeneration scheme, securing £265,000 for feasibility and design studies for 340 city centre council homes.

The Groves has a mix of 1960s-built council flats and maisonettes with some Victorian terrace houses – 340 homes in total - and this money could mean many are extended or refurbished, or new homes are built.

The regeneration project will look at widening the type of homes in The Groves through things like converting extra internal space, adding dormer conversions to traditional pitched roof flats, building extensions on to housing blocks and perhaps selling the larger Victorian terrace houses.

York Press:

Cllr Sam Lisle, York’s executive member for housing and safer neighbourhoods, said: “This is an important boost to our ongoing investment in council-owned homes to ensure that our tenants have good quality homes and the right mix to tenures to meet current demand and help address tenants’ changing housing needs.”

The work could also see family and older people’s housing in the area separated and more bungalows built. It could even stretch to the creation self-contained studio flats to broaden the types of tenure and make sure tenants do not fall foul of housing benefit restrictions.

The Department for Communities and Local Government called for bids for the scheme in January this year.

Council properties in the area are already earmarked for a roof replacement programme for 2018, so the grant will help fund more technical studies to plan this and to identify further regeneration like new lifts, looking at where blocks might be extended or regenerating under-used communal areas.

Besides feasibility work, York’s funding will also be used to talk to people nearby and consider opportunities to improve the social and physical environment around the estate.