Good quality, affordable homes for all
Our ambition remains to make Rotherham Council the best housing provider in the country, offering decent, well-maintained homes to residents who need them.
The Rotherham Housing Strategy 2025–30 sets out a clear direction for the next five years to increase the overall number of homes through the creation of new housing and investment in existing homes and communities, as well as our efforts to help tackle homelessness and reduce carbon emissions from homes.
The differences you will see:
Committed to providing 1,000 new council homes by 2027, alongside improving the quality of existing Council homes
We recognise the importance of improving both quality and affordability of homes across the borough. The average house price is now 5.5 times the average annual salary of someone working in Rotherham and the average rent for a three-bedroomed property has increased by 46% over the last five years.
We are actively working on expanding our housing stock to meet the growing demand for affordable homes. But it’s not just about building more new homes. Good housing that is free from damp and mould is essential to good health, and maximising energy efficiency is crucial in reducing heating costs and preventing fuel poverty. We want to make houses in Rotherham warmer, and cheaper to run for our residents. For this reason, all new council houses will be rated at least EPC grade C, ensuring that they are efficient and warm. We will also be improving energy performance of our existing houses, incorporating learning from our retrofit pilot in Maltby, towards the national target of all rented homes achieving at least EPC grade C by 2030.
Keeping our homes decent and safe is a key priority and significant additional investment has been earmarked over the next five years to support this aim, underpinned by a full survey of all of our council homes. This is part of a wider set of improvements being made to the housing service to ensure regulatory compliance.
Improving prevention outcomes for those at risk of homelessness by keeping more people in their homes for longer and reducing use of emergency hotel accommodation
It is vital that we take steps to prevent homelessness, providing temporary accommodation and working with partners to offer other support, such as help to find work or address health issues, including treatment for drug or alcohol addiction. We want to give people who are or are at risk of becoming homeless the support which they need to find a stable home. We will work with a preventative ethos to help people make permanent change to their living situation and get their lives back on track.
Work with developers to facilitate delivery of good quality and affordable homes
We are considering options to review the Local Plan due to the implications of the revised National Planning Policy Framework and the significant increase to Rotherham’s housing target. We will continue to work with housing developers/ housebuilders and registered providers of social housing to enable key strategic housing sites identified in the Local Plan to be developed, delivering much-needed homes and contributing to meeting our housing targets. Continuing to provide a high quality, efficient planning service will help to accelerate housing delivery, including pre-application advice for housing developments.
The focus of activity will be council-owned sites with housing potential across the borough, and in pursuit of our ambition to deliver a revitalised town centre and a new urban community, such as the development of a garden community at Bassingthorpe Farm, which will provide homes in walkable neighbourhoods, with excellent links to the town centre, Greasbrough and Kimberworth, and the proposed site of the mainline station. This development will be situated amongst ample green space and the community will also contain shops, a primary school, allotments and parks.
