THE county council is set to spend more than £700,000 paid to it from housing developments on homeless accommodation.

Cash raised in Monmouth is set to be used to lease four one-bedroom apartments from the Hedyn housing association at the new Nailer’s Lane development.

It would also include Monmouthshire Council reimbursing itself for refurbishment cost of the former Severn View residential home, in Chepstow, which it converted to a hostel housing up to 17 single homeless people last year.

And it will also use the funds to make up a shortfall, in grant funding, to cover renovation costs of a bungalow it has bought in Abergavenny to be used as a house of multiple occupation, or HMO, for homeless households.

The council’s planning policy requires all residential development of between one to four homes to make a contribution towards affordable housing, under what is known as a Section 106 condition.

At the end of July last year the council held £905,458.37 collected from payments in the Monmouth, Chepstow, Caldicot and Abergavenny new housing areas, and the cash, which has to be spent within a set timeframe, must also be used for affordable housing in the area where it was collected.

The council is allocating £732,376 of the contributions for projects in Monmouth, Chepstow and Abergavenny, plus up to £260,720 towards the conversion and refurbishment of Severn View, which is expected to come in at £350,000, saving the council from having to fund the whole of the conversion from its own coffers.

At Nailer’s Lane, the intention is to work with Hedyn, formed by a merger between Newport City Homes and Melin housing association, to deliver four one-bedroom apartments, which the council will lease on completion for use for homeless households.

The council had planned to use £28,556.34 in social housing grant this year towards the development, but will now substitute that with the Section 106 contribution which will release the same amount to be used elsewhere.

The bungalow at Park Crescent, Abergavenny was bought with funding from Welsh Government’s Transitional Accommodation Capital Programme, but while refurbishment is expected to cost £300,000, there is a shortfall of £250,000, which will now be covered from the Section 106 funding rather the council having to cover it.

The refurbishment is expected to be completed by autumn this year.

It also plans to work with a registered social landlord to use up to £193,100 to support acquiring one or two properties off the open market in Abergavenny.

They would be available for social rent and allocated to households with a recognised housing need, though it’s likely the cost of acquisition, and any refurbishment required to meet housing standards would have to be supplemented from the Social Housing Grant received by the council and built into its capital programme plan.

The council will have £173,081.87 remaining in the contributions to be spent from 2027 onwards if the current spending plans are approved.

The report, and spending allocations, are due to be considered when the council’s cabinet meets at County Hall in Usk on Wednesday (May 20) at 4.30pm.

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