New housing at Shortbread Court opened today

A new affordable housing development in Granton has been opened by the Council’s Housing Convener Councillor Cammy Day.

There are 27 homes in the development which was built by Queensberry Properties Ltd (Cruden Homes East Scotland) and the £2.9m costs was partly met by £767,000 of funding from the Affordable Housing Supply Programme. This programme is run by the council on behalf of the Scottish Government.

Each of the houses has all mod cons to offer a warm energy-efficient place to live with insulation and gas central heating.

Councillor Day said: “We were delighted to work with our housing partners to deliver this development. Joining forces with organisations such as Link is allowing the council to build record numbers of much-needed affordable housing.”

Roy Stirrat who is Chairman of Link Group said : “Since 2013 Link has built 138 new homes for social and intermediate rent in Edinburgh which have played a part in tackling the Capital’s shortage of affordable homes.”

Affordable housing is exactly that – a type of housing which can be afforded by those with a ‘median household income’ as set by the government of the country. It includes homes for social renting and was one of the ways to reintroduce homes for rent when some council housing stock was taken out of the rental pool by Right to Buy introduced by the Conservative UK Government in the 1980s.