The new Affordable Housing Delivery Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) will help guide developers and the council to achieve as much affordable housing as possible from proposed development.
It also prioritises social rented and affordable rented homes, which best meet local housing needs and aims to secure more affordable homes as houses, with fewer flats.
Now it has been adopted, this will have full weight in planning decisions made for new housing development in the borough.
Whilst most affordable housing is expected to be provided on new development sites, where this is not possible the council has published an online financial contributions calculator to provide means of securing contributions to affordable housing.
Councillor Adam Bermange, Cabinet Member for Planning, Governance and Asset Management, said: “We all know there’s an urgent need for more genuinely affordable housing in our borough and many residents find it very difficult to find a home, either to buy or rent, especially young people and those on low incomes.
“This document adopted by Cabinet will help optimise the amount and type of affordable housing that we can deliver through the planning system, placing the priority on social rented as this is the most affordable to residents.”