Our new CEO, Alex Notay, has a long interview with @carlbrowne17.bsky.social in @housingtoday.bsky.social Today setting out her vision for The Housing Forum and wider housing sector: www.housingtoday.co.uk/in-focus/a-n...
Encouraging new entrants, including for-profit RPs into the market may help fill the gap. Or smaller social landlords do have more headroom so could try to scale up their delivery plans.
The fall in interest rate cover is caused mainly by the small number of very large landlords. But these are the ones who have historically built most of the new homes. If they're effectively 'in the red' from their existing borrowing, they can't borrow more - as needed - to build new homes.
New figures out today illustrate the stress the social housing system is under.
"The metric means that the sector is generating just 87p in underlying cash per pound of interest after major repairs are taken into account". www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/sectors...
Social landlords spent 13% more on repairs last year - but rents went up by only 2.7%.
This is leaving a growing gap in the finances of housing associations and councils - and leaving them unable to invest in new homes.
www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insi...
The announcement also confirms that social rents that are below 'target rents' will be allowed to rise gradually over coming years - but we're still waiting on conformation on how fast they can rise. The sector has been calling for £3/week (on top of the CPI+1%).
Some really helpful announcements here for supporting the supply of new social housing:
- Loans to landlords at just 0.1% interest
- £3.5m for the Council Housebuilding Support Fund
- Less bureaucracy for councils who don't own much council housing to start building
www.gov.uk/government/n...
The Housing Forum urges Government to implement the new funding streams as soon as possible to give the supply chain the continuity of work needed to build capacity.
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696f8a...
4) A new Warm Homes Agency will oversee consumer protections and drive up quality.
3) There's high ambitions for heat networks, to generate 20% of our heat by 2025, and doubling from current rates by 2035.
2) The Warm Homes Scheme Social Housing Fund will continue until 2027, but will then be integrated with the funds for low income homeowners, with a shift toward area-based delivery.
1) The focus is moving away from solid wall installation (judged to be poor value for money with non-compliance problems) and towards electrification - solar PV, batteries and heat pumps.
We welcomed the Government’s Warm Homes Plan. Our members across the housing sector know how important it is to reduce energy bills, keep homes warm and reduce emissions from our housing stock.
Four key points from the Warm Homes Plan that the housing sector should be aware of:
This is welcome news from the Building Safety Regulator - having an ongoing dialogue around what is needed will really help to get applications processed faster, and improve the rates of success, getting high quality new homes built faster. www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/bsr-to-...
Our members report that the lack of first time buyers who can afford to purchase is currently a major barrier to building new homes. We therefore welcome this review into mortgage lending practice.
The FCA has announced a review of mortgage lending rules to:
- Increase flexibility for first time buyers
- Review rules around later-life lending
- Explore how AI can help mortgage brokers
- Protect vulnerable consumers www.fca.org.uk/news/press-r...
Congratulations to
@lb-southwark.bsky.social, @lewisham.gov.uk, @haringeyboroughfc.bsky.social, @lfb-walthamforest.bsky.social mforest.bsky.social
and @citywestminster.bsky.social for topping the table this year! This is a real success, against very challenging financial circumstances.
It's great to see so many of our Councils Network members top the table for building new homes. And a 10.7% rise in council housebuilding in the last year nationwide.
Good write up from @jessmccabe.bsky.social @insidehousing.bsky.social here www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/bigg...
Meet the councils who are building homes again - the numbers are up more than 10% in one year, despite all the bad news recently about how difficult it is.
www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/bigg...
We welcome measures announced in today’s budget to support the housebuilding sector and reductions to the levies on electricity bills but call for more support for councils with the costs of homelessness.
housingforum.org.uk/the-housing-...
3) Improving housing quality:
- Removal of VAT from retrofitting, regeneration and fire safety work undertaken by social landlords
- New funding to cover costs of meeting higher energy efficiency standards or the new Decent Homes Standard.
housingforum.org.uk/campaigns/th...
2) Support for the wider housing sector:
- Adequate resourcing for the Building Safety Regulator
- Rethinking planned changes to landfill tax which could add £25k to the cost of building a new home
- Tax changes to support the for-profit RP and Build-to-Rent sectors
- First time buyer support
What are we hoping for in tomorrow's budget?
1) Funding social landlords to maintain and upgrade their existing homes, alongside building new homes:
- Rent convergence to allow social rents to increase back to target rents, of at least £2 a week.
- Higher grant rates for larger social homes
Opinions may vary, but the figures speak for themselves: Help to Buy has generated £1.38billion for taxpayers and supported 328,346 first-time buyers onto the market.
We’ve analysed the performance of Help to Buy, here’s what we found 👇
The Housing Forum welcomes this consultation - many of these ideas are ones we've been calling for, in our paper on Streamlining Planning - housingforum.org.uk/wp-content/u...
It is important to strike the right balance between consultation and streamlining planning to build more homes.
Government is planning changes to the planning system to streamline it:
- Removing Sports England, The Gardens Trust & Theatres Trust as statutory consultees
- Reducing the scope of statutory consultees
- Measures to ensure they don't hold up planning applications.
www.gov.uk/government/c...
The GLA allocates is own share of the grant for London. And announced today, six northern mayors will also £7bn between them to allocate. (Greater Manchester, West Midlands, North East, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region and South Yorkshire)
The Government has today published the new Social and Affordable Homes Programme. This prospectus sets out how they will be allocating the £39bn for housing over the next 10 years. www.gov.uk/guidance/soc...
The key recommendations on Land Value Capture were:
1 ) New template clauses for S106 agreements
2) Reinstate funded Level 7 planning apprenticeships for students over 21
3) Dispute resolution for deadlocked negotiations between LAs and developers
4) Publish updated land value estimates data
