CONCERN has been aired recently in the T&A about the proliferation of applications to build cheap flats or conversions in the city centre. This has been going on since the 1990s in the wake of the vast amount of new flat accommodation built in Leeds.

Since the creation of the housing trust Incommunities in 2003, which took over the management of properties formerly run by Bradford Council, demand for housing in the Bradford district has changed.

In January 2011, for example, Incommunities’ deputy chief executive (asset management) Jez Lester said: “What we are finding increasingly is that bedsits for the elderly are unpopular and are not being taken up. It shows that the elderly and their families don’t want to move into this kind of accommodation.

“We also have an over-supply of one-bed flats. Forty per cent of our stock is one-bed flats. They aren’t being taken up and are obsolete to requirements.”

Since then the impact of the Government’s bedroom tax for people on benefits has slackened the demand for two-bedroom flats of the kind that predominate in five of the 11 high-rise blocks of flats along Manchester Road (there are 32 blocks in the district).

Mr Lester said this week: “The five white blocks as they are known have an over supply of two-bedroom flats because people don’t want to live in them. Families with children especially don’t want to live in them.

“If the bedroom tax were to be scrapped we would find it easier to let two-bedroom flats. We would have more flexibility in letting. Somebody who had just come out of a divorce might want a spare bedroom to look after the kids at the weekend.”

Hundreds of Incommunities’ tenants are able to remain where they are, where they want to be, because they have discretionary housing benefit payments. If the money central government gives to Bradford Council for this should be cut then tenants deemed to be under-occupiers would be obliged to downsize.

Martin Stubbs, Bradford Council’s deputy director of revenues and benefits, said the £1.1m the government gave to Bradford Council to cover discretionary housing payments is going to be cut in the next financial year by £250,000. Up to December last year the council had made 1,699 awards of which 61 per cent were to people whose housing benefit had been cut due to the bedroom tax.

The council is currently discussing whether to make up that shortfall out of its reserves. The authority’s annual budget meeting takes place on Thursday, February 26. If the reduction is not made up tenants who rely on them will be obliged to move home.

“In my experience people don’t wait for us to rehouse them, they go into the private rented sector. At the moment there are 60,000 rented properties in Bradford for people to have a go at – the largest number I have known,” Mr Lester added. The Government could argue that its objective of reducing dependency was working.

Incommunities is well-served by single-bedroom properties. Six of the tower blocks on Manchester Road are predominantly in this category.

Speculative building of buy-to-let properties in the city centre, primarily for a transient population passing through, doesn’t answer the housing needs of people who have lived here for a long time.

There is still a demand for family homes and a growing demand for alternative accommodation for the elderly and very elderly. Since 2007, Incommunities has built some 500 properties and taken out 300 to 400 flats and maisonettes. The organisation has also converted flats to houses, as at Chain Street just off Westgate where three-bedroom homes are being made out of formerly derelict flats.

Four hundred or more inquiries have been made about renting 64 three and four-bedroom homes on Green Lane, off Lumb Lane, even before Incommunities has put them on the market.

Developments like this have been funded by building houses for sale. In Green Lane, 20 houses for sale in Ben Rhydding and another five for rent. The money from housing sales – profit for purposes as it’s called – is set aside for improvements and more building.

In the future the needs of the elderly will be more pressing. By 2020 Bradford’s population is expected to be in excess of 600,000. An independent analysis of census projections carried out for Incommunities indicates the biggest proportion of this growth will be among people aged 65 and over.

“We have 19 sheltered housing schemes around the district. We need to improve these and invest in them. But do the elderly need sheltered accommodation or something different?” Jez Lester said. “It means we have to re-focus, not just on family accommodation, but what we have to offer for the elderly. As yet we have no concrete plans to put to our board.”