Councillors vote on 8 September on buying six homes in the borough with developer and grant money. Families in nightly-paid rooms could move in from October.

Spelthorne Borough Council wants to buy six more homes in the borough and move families out of nightly-paid rooms into them from October or November.

Councillors decide on Tuesday 8 September. The report asks the Corporate Policy and Resources Committee to approve the purchase of:

  • four long leasehold properties
  • one freehold property
  • one property with a share of the freehold

All six are in the borough. Terms have been agreed in principle, subject to the vote and to legal checks. The council will not say what it is paying or where the homes are: prices and addresses sit in a confidential appendix, withheld because publishing them would weaken the council’s hand in the negotiations.

Where the money comes from

None of it is new borrowing. Two pots are being used.

The first is a commuted sum, a payment a private developer made under a section 106 planning obligation instead of providing affordable homes on its own site. The second is grant from the government’s Local Authority Housing Fund.

Both come with a clock on them:

  • the Local Authority Housing Fund money must be spent by 31 March 2027
  • the commuted sum must be spent or committed by 5 February 2030, or it goes back to the developer

The report says that if the commuted sum is not applied, the council and its successor would “forgo the benefit of £3.85m capital funding to support affordable housing”.

Table of key dates for Spelthorne's housing purchases, from the 16 July 2026 Full Council approval to the 5 February 2030 commuted sum deadline

Full Council already approved buying five freehold properties with part of the commuted sum on 16 July 2026. These six are the next tranche, and officers say a further report will follow for more.

The problem it is meant to fix

The council’s Q1 2026/27 performance report, on the same agenda, shows why. Between April and June it spent £584,371 on temporary accommodation, against a full-year budget of £1.6m.

Two other figures in that report are starker:

  • households currently in nightly-paid accommodation have been there an average of 228 days, against a target of 120 days by the end of March 2027
  • households in temporary accommodation have been there an average of 54 weeks

Officers write that they are “ahead of target for reducing the number of households in nightly-paid accommodation” and are negotiating rates with landlords, while warning that homelessness is unpredictable and the forecast should stay prudent.

The six homes are meant to cut that bill directly. Families move from nightly-paid rooms into council-owned property, and the nightly charge stops.

What it means for you

If you are on the housing register, these are six more homes in the borough, allocated under the council’s existing Housing Allocations Policy rather than to anyone in particular. Officers expect occupation in October or November, though some purchases depend on the sellers completing chains of their own.

The homes need minor repairs before anyone moves in, and the report flags that the cost of that work could rise before it is formally instructed. Properties with an EPC rating below C may be dropped unless upgrading them is cheap enough, and the council notes the acquisitions will add to its own carbon footprint through the boilers it takes on.

If the committee says no, the decision passes to West Surrey Council, which replaces Spelthorne on 1 April 2027. The report calls that the worse option, because the money would sit unspent while families stay where they are.

The meeting is at 7pm on Tuesday 8 September in the Council Chamber at Knowle Green, Staines-upon-Thames TW18 1XB, and is webcast on YouTube. The agenda includes a slot for questions from members of the public, and officers ask for material questions on this report to reach the committee chair and the officer contact two days before the meeting.

Planning decisions across the borough are tracked on our Staines planning news page, and what the council charges households is set out in Staines council tax bands.

Sources