Forty-one brand new 100 per cent affordable flats will be coming to the town centre as a ‘surrogate site’ to a major town centre development.

The ownership of the North Street former family support centre has been transferred to Reading Borough Council (RBC) to turn it into social rent affordable housing.

The plan was signed off by officers on Thursday, September 17, after getting approval from the council’s Planning Applications committee earlier this year.

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The development is a surrogate site to Lochailort’s 335-home Thames Quarter project at the former Cooper BMW garage on Napier Road, as the developer said it would not be viable to include on-site affordable housing.

But the number of affordable flats being built as part of the project will more than halve compared to previous agreements.

The Thames Quarter project was granted in September 2017 with zero affordable housing.

But the developer had to agree to provide a separate 25 to 56-home site with 100 per cent affordable housing beforehand to make up for the lack of on-site affordable housing.

An additional 20 homes were approved at the Thames Quarter site in September 2019, at the same time upping the affordable housing requirement from 18 per cent to 30 per cent.

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At that time, the council said the 30 per cent affordable housing would be built off-site at two ‘surrogate’ developments, with 101 socially rented homes to be built in total.

During the meeting councillors praised the increase in affordable housing, with Cllr Karen Rowland saying: “That 30 per cent makes me feel really good. We really need to be bullish about that.”

But since then, the council has revealed that just 54 affordable homes will be built in total, those approved at the former Reading Family Centre, with RBC suggesting that financially this will be the equivalent of providing 101 affordable homes.

A spokesman for the council said: “The new planning agreement offers 54 affordable homes as part of a package of both land and building work – this is  equivalent of just over £8 million in value and is the financial equivalent of providing around 101 affordable homes.

“In securing this agreement the council has been able to achieve an increased affordable housing contribution close to 30 per cent of the number of homes being built at the Thames Quarter.”

The council had also previously stated that “in all instances, if less than 54 plots are provided, a top-up contribution of £105,000 per missing plot will be paid to the council”.

But this is now not the case.

The council said: “Providing the housing elsewhere means we get larger, more valuable family homes or units designed to meet specific needs.

“This might mean we get fewer actual dwellings in terms of numbers but in terms of value they are worth the same and we get more dwellings that can meet identified housing needs, which are difficult to meet from the existing housing stock.

“This is a good negotiated outcome.”

The homes will be split into two blocks and will contain:

19x one-bed flats

21x two-bed flats

1x three-bed flat