'Living classrooms' set to see students learn on the tools helping build new council houses in Sunderland

Sunderland City Council recently announced it would become a landlord once again to shape the housing market for future generations.

Over the next five years, £59million will be invested into a range of affordable housing projects.

This includes 117 new bungalows, 95 supported homes accommodation and bringing 362 empty homes back into use.

As part of the Housing Delivery and Investment Plan, council bosses are in discussions with Sunderland College around placements and apprenticeships.

This includes developing living classrooms to allow students to gain work experience in a real work environment.

“We have a quite exciting partnership with Sunderland College where we’re going to look at all the opportunities for placements for students at the college, what apprenticeship opportunities can be created but also the development of living classrooms,” Graham Scanlon, Assistant Director of Housing, said.

“We would take cohorts from the college and place them into properties where they will undertake full refurbishments of properties.

“Rather than going into workshops, they would go into real live environments and work on real homes under the close supervision of our team and their tutors.

“I will be presenting to the students in the next few weeks to try and encourage them to get involved.”

The council officer was speaking at a recent meeting of the council’s Economic Prosperity Scrutiny Committee on Tuesday, March 10.

Councillors heard that the living classrooms would cover both empty homes and some new builds alongside existing council apprenticeships.

Council bosses have also set up a ‘local procurement framework’ for any firms interested in refurbishment or building developments to “maximise the local exposure of new work to local businesses.”

Other potential schemes in the pipeline include a ‘new model of delivery’ around empty homes with students living locally in the area carrying out works.

Council bosses are also planning to acquire 13 properties in Middle Hendon to trial the idea.

The key aims of the council’s housing strategy include:

:: Maximising housing growth and increasing the choice of housing

:: Making the best use of existing homes and improving our neighbourhoods

:: Supporting vulnerable people to access and maintain housing

Current challenges around empty properties range from poor management and absent landlords to out-of-area investors with “no city or community buy-in.”

Mr Scanlon added:“Against that backdrop it does create a little bit of difficulty to try and break that cycle, however break that cycle we want to do and make sure the city is on the front foot and not the back foot going forward.

“In that, the housing strategy sets the backbone of what we’re trying to do and achieve and makes it clear that dealing with empty priorities is a key priority for us.”