 New residents of the development join Clare Town Councillors and Hastoe team to celebrate the opening
In 2008 Clare Town Council,
then Clare Parish Council, sponsored a community group to lead the work to
understand the needs and desires of our community. These surveys, with a response rate of over 80%, led to what was to
become the Clare Community Plan.
The Community
Plan sets out what Clare’
s residents want to improve about
our town and environment, forming a guide for the future development of Clare.
One of the aspects
covered by the plan was housing.
One
of the early results from the community-wide questionnaire was that 90% of our
parishioners have no intention of ever leaving Clare! Our younger residents, however, wanted to be
able to continue to live in Clare but were not convinced that they would be
able to afford to.
This
led us to engage with Suffolk Acre to undertake an assessment of housing needs in Clare in
order to establish the need for affordable housing.
With
a very good return rate of 44% their survey established the need for affordable
homes with priority to be given to Clare residents.
Clare
Town Council undertook a 'beauty parade' of potential contractors including the
Hastoe Housing Association.
Having
interviewed them all the Town Council decided that the contract should be
awarded to Hastoe.
The Celebratory Opening of the development of 11 new affordable homes (comprising 2 x 1 bed flats, 2 x 2 bed flats, 2 x 2 bed bungalows and 3 x 3 bed houses plus 2 x 2 bed houses built for shared ownership) took place on 21st September 2015.
Clare Town Council proposed the name of the development as Aragon Court based on historical information about Clare: Clare Common was originally leased to Clare by Catherine of Aragon (the first of Henry Viii's six wives) to be used a a Common Pasture for poor people.
In his speech at the opening ceremony of the new housing development Clare Town Council Chair, Paul Bishop, said that he hoped
the new residents of the properties enjoy their new homes
and are proud to be the residents of the first affordable
housing complex sponsored by Clare Town Council.
Working
with Hastoe has been an excellent experience and their team has managed the
build, the communications with the local community and the occupation process
in a most professional manner. Clare
Town Council are delighted to have them as our partners.
Cllr. Bishop added a vote of thanks to all Town Councillors who have been involved in bringing this project to fruition; in particular Keith Haisman who was involved in the project from the beginning and drove it
through to completion.
Story By: Town Clerk
Date : 28-09-2015
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