Nine new council homes built on the site of a former builders yard in Glanville Road are being let by Oxford City Council.

Cantay Estates handed over three houses and a block of six flats to the council earlier this month.

The houses all have four bedrooms and the block is made up of two one-bedroom and four two-bedroom flats.

The council is in the process of letting the new homes to applicants on the housing register.

Councillor Diko Blackings, cabinet member for affordable housing, housing security and housing the homeless said: “Oxford needs homes and in particular it needs affordable homes.

“We’re committed to reducing the systemic inequality produced by a broken housing market and improving opportunities for our residents.

“Each new council home makes a life-changing difference to people’s lives.”

They will be allocated to a mix of council tenants on the transfer list and other families in housing need.

There are currently more than 2,850 households on the council’s housing waiting list.

This means that many people are living in overcrowded conditions or priced out of the city altogether.

More than half of the people who work in Oxford face lengthy commutes on overcrowded roads every day.

The cost of housing means that nearly a third of Oxford’s children live below the poverty line.

The houses and one-bedroom flats will be let at social rent, which will be £446 a month for the flats and between £743 and £749 a month for the houses.

The two-bedroom flats will be let at an affordable rent of £910 a month.

Social rent is calculated with reference to the size and value of a home and average regional incomes. In Oxford, social rent is typically around 40% of equivalent private rents.

Affordable rent – also known as intermediate rent – is set at up to 80% of an equivalent private rent, including service charges.

According to the Office for National Statistics, in 2020/21 median monthly private rents in Oxford were £1,043 for one-bed and £1,250 for two-bed homes.

The median monthly rent for homes with four or more bedrooms was £2,200. High demand and scarce availability mean that Oxford is among the least affordable places for housing in the UK. People on average outcomes are priced out of the housing market and private rents are nearly double the average for England as a whole.

The ONS say in 2020 the median house price in Oxford was £400,000 – 11.72 times median gross household earnings (£34,124) in the city.

For England, the median house price is 7.84 times median earnings. The cost of housing in Oxford puts home ownership out of the reach of people in occupations like teaching, nursing, transport and retail.

Half (49.3%) of homes in Oxford are now in the private rented sector, where the ONS reports a median private rent of £1,450 a month for a three-bedroom home. The equivalent amount for England as a whole is £800.