For many people, Neston is a great place to live, work, learn, grow up and grow old, but not for everyone.
Neston Community Youth Centre's work with Job Centre Plus, Citizens Advice West Cheshire, West Cheshire Foodbank and ForFutures along with our own programmes with young people has highlighted a problem. If you are aged 18 to 49 and live alone, there are a number of problems with finding suitable accommodation in the area.
There isn't enough one bedroom homes for the demand and those that exist are often too expensive or only available for the over 50's.
Neston residents also receive less housing benefit than most of the rest of Cheshire because of the Housing Benefit Allowance rates set by Government.This means that many people have to move out of the area to be able to afford to live alone or face the prospect of paying bedroom tax on a home that is too large and private rents that are unaffordable to many on minimum wage, zero hours contracts or are not working.
The Neston Neighbourhood Plan group highlighted these problems a number of years ago and they were highlighted again in both the Economic Development Plan and a more recent Housing Needs Assessment.
Neston Community Youth Centre has been working with the Neighbourhood Plan Monitoring Group and partners to explore solutions to this problem and through support from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government Community Led Homes Start Up Support Programme we are now working with local people to begin to solve this problem.
Ideally, we are aiming to build a small number of local homes, owned by the community, managed by the community and for the people in the community when they need them. This website will be updated with our progress starting with our Introductory Workshop on the 5th March