Dave Thomas: Turning Torbay's hotels into homes

Last year we approved an exciting new project that is looking at converting former hotels into high quality social housing for locals.

One of our priorities is to continue to focus on finding new and innovative ways to deliver more social homes for rent to tackle the shortage of available properties. The Hotel to Homes scheme is part of our Housing strategy and will see us delivering our first ‘council housing’ directly in the Bay for a generation. 

We are leading the way with this project, and I believe it is the first of its kind in England.

The reason we need to look at doing things differently is because the delivery of affordable homes in Torbay has fallen considerably over the past few years. 

This is against a backdrop of an increase in the number of households needing a permanent home, while the tourism industry continues to change and our partners struggle to find accommodation for their key workers. 

The first Hotel to Homes scheme, subject to planning permission, will see the former Brampton Court Hotel on St Luke’s Road South in Torquay be re-purposed into 14 modern, energy efficient and sustainable homes of one and two bedrooms. Our specialist social housing delivery team has worked with our development and funding partners to identify and secure this property. 

The developer will be carrying out the conversion works, and we have agreed to purchase the homes when they are complete. They will then be let to local households through Devon Home Choice. 

Our ambition is to prove that re-purposing former hotel accommodation in this way can contribute to the growth needed here in Torbay. Particularly as the Bay has a number of disused hotels, guesthouses and bed and breakfasts.

We want to deliver several similar brownfield redevelopments like this over the coming years. And work is also currently underway to identify the second and other sites for this programme of work.

The project is being funded and supported by a £3million UK Government grant. We are also getting further investment from the Devon and Torbay Devolution Deal to fund the second project, along with investment by us directly. 

Repurposing disused brownfield sites in this way stops them becoming derelict and attracting anti-social behaviour. It also supports neighbourhood regeneration and renewal.

By doing things this way, it means we are able to move quickly to make these homes available. This will help people find the security of a decent home and help you and the community thrive. 

I would like to thank all those that have worked so hard over recent months to make this ambition a reality and I look forward to welcoming residents into their new homes later in 2025. I will, of course, continue to share updates here on how this is progressing.

I wanted to finish this week’s letter to say thank you to those of you that took the time to come down and see us at our latest Residents Engagement Event in Paignton last Saturday. 

I understand between all the Councillors and Officers in attendance we spoke to over 400 of you. So, if that was one of you, it was great to see you and hear that people purposefully made the visit into Paignton town centre to come to the event.

There was lots of interest in our regeneration plans, with quite a few happening in Paignton over the next few years. To make sure you don’t miss out on our latest news on these sites and our future Residents Engagement Events, which will be taking place in March, make sure you sign up to our weekly eNewsletter One Torbay. You can do this at www.torbay.gov.uk/onetorbay.