Join our housing conversation

Background

We're starting to look at our new housing strategy for 2024 which will update and replace the strategy agreed in 2019. This outlines what we and our partners need to do to make sure County Durham will be a place of good quality affordable homes that meet the needs of both existing and future residents including our older and younger generations.

Housing is more than just the roof over our heads. Good quality housing supports economic growth, helps to improve health and wellbeing for our residents and the educational achievements of our children, and creates and maintains thriving communities where people live long and independent lives. It therefore links into many areas of our work including planning, climate change, the economy, health and children's services, as well as ways to tackle homelessness and poverty.

Putting together the basis for our strategy

So far, we've set out a draft vision, which creates a view of what we want to achieve in County Durham, seven draft principles and five priorities which could form the basis of this strategy. These are based on local evidence of the county's housing needs, both now and in the future, and what our housing market looks like. We need your help to confirm that these are right and identify if we've missed anything.

Draft Vision, Principles and Priorities

You can read about the draft Vision, Principles and Priorities in the  draft vision, principles and priorities paper (PDF) [131KB]  which was agreed for consultation by our Cabinet earlier in June.

Evidence base

The strategy development is supported by an evidence base to understand the issues for people in County Durham, regarding the homes and places they live. This includes: 

• data on the housing market and housing need can be found in The County Durham Strategic Housing Market Assessment 2018 which is contained in the current  Housing strategy County Durham (PDF) [14MB]
• data on demographics, housing, education, economics, health and wellbeing on the Durham Insights data and research platform in the Theme sections.

Join our housing conversation

Whether you own your own home, rent it from a social or private landlord, live with family or friends because you're a young person, older, cannot afford to move out, we would like to know what you think about housing and the neighbourhood you live in. What are your housing concerns and aspirations? What do we need to do to help meet your housing needs and the needs of others in the county?

We're also talking with our partners, housing organisations, landlords and housing developers to get their views on the draft principles and priorities outlined further down this page.