A DISTRICT councillor has slammed Blenheim Estate’s affordable housing policy as the organisation builds more than 150 homes in her ward.

Merilyn Davies, Labour district councillor for Freeland and Hanborough, believes Blenheim’s decision to sign up to the house-building principles of charity The Prince’s Foundation will create a ‘feudal situation’.

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Last month, the estate signed up to the foundation’s Principles of Responsible Home Building, which states landowners have a responsibility to build homes their communities ‘actually want’.

Under these guidelines, affordable housing will be available for a discount of up to 40 per cent of market rents, but Blenheim will continue to own some of these homes.

The estate is applying these principles to a 300-home site east of Woodstock and 169 homes in Long Hanborough, Ms Davies’s ward, and is working with West Oxfordshire District Council to identify other sites.

Between 35 and 50 per cent of total houses on these sites will be classed as affordable, but Ms Davies believes this will price out locals and only benefit Blenheim.

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She said: “They’re not going to be building houses that people can afford, they’re £500,000 for a three-bed – nobody in Hanborough can afford that.

“You’re basically buying a house that isn’t yours and Blenheim can do what it likes with it.”

“They just want to build up a portfolio of houses and property.

“It’s literally that feudal situation where this grand estate is creating houses for a community in order to get taxes off them through ground rent.”

In addition to the development already being built on Long Hanborough’s southfield site, the estate is appealing a rejected application north of the village.

While Blenheim maintains its intention is not to price out locals, Ms Davies claimed this was proof that the estate’s motivation was ‘profit before people’.

She said: “We have established communities and do not need a landowner to create them for us.

“What we need are homes where we need them and at a price we can afford.

“Blenheim has shown scant regard for the community of Long Hanborough, building a significant development against the community’s wishes and is now appealing a second site which the village, the parish council and West Oxfordshire District Council say is not needed for local people.

“Blenheim’s appeal against the wishes of the community prove their motive will always be profit before people.”

Blenheim Estate’s chief executive officer Dominic Hare said the estate ‘never hides’ that its motivation is profit, but insisted this is for the long-term benefit of the area.

Most housing associations only offer a 20 per cent discount on market rates, the minimum required under government policy, but Blenheim will double this.

Mr Hare said: “These rents will be affordable to more people than ever.

“We are very proud of this achievement – the effective exclusion of many local people from the market is a blight on the area.

He added: “If we can deliver truly affordable housing at a profit, we can keep doing this forever.

“The failure of the market in this area needs us to provide a large solution if we are to comprehensively resolve it.

“We intend to resolve this by creating a significant number of truly affordable homes and it is vital that we do it profitably – and we will.

“Blenheim has been here for 300 years and will be here in 300 years’ time and how well the area functions in the meantime for its communities matters greatly to us.”