Thanet District Council’s cabinet has approved spending £3.33m from its housing account to convert the derelict building at 10–13 Edgar Road, Cliftonville, into ten homes for social rent. The council says the scheme depends on winning a Homes England grant.

Thanet District Council’s cabinet has approved a £3.33 million plan to redevelop a derelict building at 10–13 Edgar Road, Cliftonville, into ten permanent council homes.

The decision was made on 17 September 2026 and took effect on 26 September, according to the council’s decision record. The council’s Overview and Scrutiny Panel had backed the plan by nine votes to two on 8 September; the minutes of that meeting were published in the papers for the panel’s 20 October meeting.

What was approved

The cabinet agreed to spend £3,330,000 from the Housing Revenue Account, to let the homes at social rent, and to allocate them under the council’s allocations policy, subject to a local letting plan. The decision record puts construction costs at £2,737,167 within the total.

The report sought approval to proceed subject to a successful application for Homes England grant. Officers told the scrutiny panel that talks with Homes England were at an early stage but positive, and that the council would pause and reassess the scheme if the grant was not secured.

The building and the homes

The council bought the property in 2023 under its Live Margate programme. The building later became uninhabitable, and the council’s RISE team, which had been using it, moved out in October 2025 because of its condition.

The scheme would provide six two-bedroom and four three-bedroom homes, sizes the council says are most in demand among the roughly 1,400 households on its housing register. Planning permission is already in place. The council is aiming for an EPC ‘B’ energy rating, and officers said a 7.5% contingency had been built into the costs for problems such as rot or asbestos.

Options the council rejected

The decision record lists the alternatives considered: mothballing the site, which it says would cost more than £55,000; selling it, which would mean returning the Live Margate money used to buy it; a higher-density scheme, ruled out by rules on one-bedroom homes in Cliftonville; and a lower-quality scheme.

Sources