Hounslow: the bold west

If you are a low-paid office worker in London, your chances of being able to buy a home are somewhere between slim and none – unless you are lucky enough to live in Hounslow, west London.

Hounslow council has some of the highest housing demand in the capital, with a waiting list of just under 9000 and an average house price of £235,663. But that hasn't stopped it adopting a novel approach to tackling the growing gap between what city-dwellers want and what they can afford.

Bernadette O'Shea, the council's director of housing, explains: as of last month, anyone who earns less than £35,000 and who lives or works in the borough will be considered for key-worker housing. "In other words," she says, "anyone who meets our criteria can qualify as a key worker and be considered for a home – it's as straightforward as that."

You don't have to live south of the Watford Gap to recognise that this is not the normal way of doing such a scheme.

The government is very proud of its key-worker programme and jealously limits the £1bn funds promised for London and the South-east by April 2006 to house a select few categories of public sector workers such as teachers and nurses.

But Hounslow feels it could go much further.

Developers are very keen to build in the borough because it contains the rapidly expanding Heathrow airport; in the financial year 2002/3, the council's planners negotiated 412 homes through the section 106 planning gain process. However, in just the first week of the new approach, there were 85 applications to Locata, the body that manages the council's key-worker programme.

Steve Chalcraft, Locata's rehousing manager, says the process is becoming a victim of its own success. "People get disillusioned when they realise that another 300-odd people are all going for the same property."

But one of the reasons O'Shea and her colleagues in the council's senior management are confident they can deliver on their bold key-worker pledge is the fact that Hounslow is about to demolish and rebuild Feltham town centre.

A typical 1960s concrete nightmare, its landlord has gone bankrupt. Barbara Perry, the council's head of strategy, says the Feltham redevelopment – which began this month – will yield 700 homes, 200 of which will be affordable, as well as 3180 m2 of retail and 3150 m2 of commercial space over the next three years.

Similar plans are under way for two more of the borough's four town centres – Hounslow and Brentford – which will also contribute to affordable housing.

Locals at Hounslow Central Tube station welcomed the strategy. Tauqeer Aslam, a 38-year-old law student, said: "The Feltham project is the big one. It is a bit of an eyesore right now, but if it is redeveloped that will really lift the area."

ALMO a priority
O'Shea says that apart from delivering more affordable housing, her key priorities are getting three stars for Hounslow Homes – the arm's-length management organisation that has managed Hounslow's 15,500 homes since April 2002 – and improving housing conditions in the private sector.

O'Shea says of the ALMO: "It's like a bungee cord. Although they are at arm's length, there is quite a hard pull-back in agreeing budgets and strategy, which we still have to be involved in."

She adds that Hounslow Homes – like many other ALMOs – faces some major funding issues as a result of right to buy sales. "In the last three years there have been 1000 right to buys, which has left some major budget gaps for 2005/6," she says (HT 16 January, page 12).

But despite these issues, don't be surprised if you hear Hounslow has become a hot new location for first-time buyers – whatever their profession.