Leeds City Council has unveiled ambitious plans to become the first local authority in the UK to make housing its top priority.

The ‘Leeds: The Housing City’ campaign will see huge investment in the provision of affordable homes, along with a series of additional measures designed to help people in housing need and cut numbers from social housing waiting lists. The council has promised to pump cash into existing schemes, tackle council housing waiting lists and to encourage developers to continue building homes.

In a keynote speech to launch the campaign, council leader Andrew Carter will announce a series of initiatives, including a £3.78m kick-start for the building of affordable homes through the Strategic Affordable Housing Partnership, which will see homes built on 87 acres of public brownfield land with work on 86 properties starting this year; encouraging developers to build affordable housing by waiving the Section 106 (S106) planning contribution for housing developments that are 100% affordable; spending £2.4m to buy 20 properties, 10 of which will become council houses and the others becoming affordable rented properties as well as protecting major projects such as the East and South East Leeds (EASEL) initiative so it can brave difficult economic times.