Folkestone & Hythe’s Risborough Barracks Deal: Taylor Wimpey Payments Revealed as Temporary Accommodation Costs Soar

Folkestone & Hythe District Council has so far paid Taylor Wimpey £2,390,013.56 towards the Risborough Barracks affordable homes scheme, based on supplier payment data covering April 2025 to January 2026. Ten of the 44 new homes at Shorncliffe have already been handed over for tenants to move into, with the remaining 34 units due to be ready for occupation in autumn 2026.

Progress on the Risborough Barracks home last November. Picture: FHDC

At the same time, the council’s spend on temporary accommodation has continued to surge. In the same April 2025 to January 2026 supplier data period, payments recorded under “Bed & Breakfast Accommodation” and “Self Contained Nightly Lets” total £1,124,214.88. The council has also said the number of households in temporary accommodation has now risen to around 125.

Those two figures sit side by side for a reason. The Council is increasing its stock of genuinely affordable, long-term homes let at Local Housing Allowance levels (rather than “affordable rent” set at up to 80% of market rent), which should ease pressure over time — but it is doing so against a backdrop of persistently high homelessness demand and eye-watering spending on temporary, stop-gap accommodation.

The Risborough Barracks purchase was approved by Cabinet in October 2024 as a Section 106 acquisition of 44 affordable homes from Taylor Wimpey, funded through the Housing Revenue Account (HRA). That is the council’s ring-fenced housing account, used for its own housing stock and related housing activity. In plain English, this is council-housing money being used to buy more council homes.

The published Cabinet report described the scheme as 44 homes, originally split into 26 for affordable rent and 18 for shared ownership, reflecting the Section 106 tenure mix. It also stated the homes would be all-electric and delivered to EPC B standard, with solar panels and associated equipment including storage heaters, inverters and optimisers.

That approach fits the council’s wider HRA strategy. The HRA Business Plan provides for annual resources of £5 million (at current prices) to support delivery of roughly 20 additional council homes a year during the first 18 years of the plan. Risborough Barracks is exactly the kind of acquisition that policy was designed to support.

But the pressure on the housing system has been intensifying. The council’s October 2025 Cabinet reporting, as highlighted by The Shepway Vox Team, said around 115 households were then in temporary accommodation, up from about 55 a year earlier. It also recorded heavy reliance on privately provided nightly-let accommodation, with additional use of council-held units to fill gaps. The latest figure of around 125 households shows that pressure has risen again.

That changing demand profile also helps explain a major shift in the Risborough scheme. The council has since said the shared ownership element has been dropped because demand for affordable rent is much higher. At the time of the update, there were 1,238 households on the housing waiting list. In that context, prioritising affordable rent looks like a practical response to immediate need.

Where the public picture becomes harder to follow is the agreed price.

The published Risborough Barracks report confirms the council made a financial offer to Taylor Wimpey for the 44 homes and a separate offer for energy-efficiency upgrades, but both headline figures are redacted. It also says the detailed financial appraisal is contained in a confidential appendix. So the public report does not disclose the full agreed package value or allow residents to separate the homes price from the upgrades.

What the report does reveal is the payment structure: 30 per cent of the contract value at “Golden Brick”, followed by nine staged payments at key milestones. It also says those stage payments would run from July 2025 to practical completion in November 2025.

That is where the supplier-payment data becomes useful. In the April 2025 to January 2026 spreadsheet, all entries containing “Taylor Wimpey” total £2,390,013.56 across eight ledger lines (effectively six payment references, because some references are split across two lines). The entries are recorded as capital HRA acquisitions.

That total is confirmed paid in the spreadsheet period. It is not, by itself, proof of the final agreed contract value for the 44 homes, and it does not separate the homes price from the energy-upgrade element.

One inference is possible, but it remains an inference. If the 11 June 2025 payment of £740,926.11 was the 30 per cent Golden Brick payment referred to in the Cabinet report, the implied contract value would be £2,469,753.70. On that basis, the £2,390,013.56 shown by January 2026 would represent about 96.77 per cent of that implied total, leaving £79,740.

So the picture is now clearer, but not complete. Residents can see the homes arriving. They can see substantial HRA payments to Taylor Wimpey. They can also see temporary accommodation spending of £1,124,214.88 in just ten months of 2025/26, while the number of households in temporary accommodation has climbed to around 125.

The first tenants moving into Risborough Barracks is a real milestone. The next question, and the one that matters most for residents and council tenants alike, is whether enough permanent homes can be delivered quickly enough to slow the temporary accommodation bill — and whether the final, still-redacted deal price proves to be strong value for money.

The Shepway Vox Team

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