• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
Housing Technology logo

Housing Technology

Housing | IT | Telecoms | Business | Ecology

  • Free Subscription
  • Search Archive
  • Home
  • Research
  • Magazine
  • Events
  • Recruitment
  • Blog
  • On Demand
  • Contact
Home / Magazine Articles / Are housing providers losing their appetite to develop?

Are housing providers losing their appetite to develop?

Sir – At the time of writing (early August 2014), the Homes and Communities Agency had just allocated more than half of its £1.7 billion grant funding for the 2015-2018 affordable homes programme and it’s clear that some of the biggest landlords are shrinking their bids by between a half and two-thirds of their previous programmes.

This is not good news for either the 1.7 million households currently waiting to be housed or the country as a whole.

Already some providers have warned that the grant rates were too low and the conditions too onerous to justify bidding, and pointed to the replacement of social rents with higher affordable rents combined with the welfare cuts as being unsustainable. Indeed, many landlords in the North of the country warned that low grant rates did not make sense economically in an area where low market rents mean lower affordable rents.

It was hoped that the government’s 10-year rent settlement would provide sufficient stability, but it seems this has been undermined by landlords’ unwillingness to raise rents to levels that are increasingly unaffordable to their tenants.

The news that housing providers could struggle to build sufficient homes after 2015 comes after it was announced that there are concerns whether landlords will even deliver the current 2011/15 affordable homes programme. Government figures show starts onsite had only reached 42,000 by last autumn against a target of 58,000 homes to be completed by March 2015, casting doubts on whether the homes will be finished in time.

So if housing providers have lost their development appetite (for whatever reasons), where will the future new homes come from? Certainly there has been an increase in private developers bidding for grants, but that on its own won’t be enough.

Someone will have to do something either at government level to encourage landlords to invest in new builds or by the private sector taking a more active role with stock- and land-owning councils. Otherwise the country could be facing a social housing crisis in the next decade.

Keith Searle

Development Director, Shelton Development Services

See More On:

  • Vendor: Shelton Development Services
  • Topic: Asset Management
  • Publication Date: 042 - November 2014
  • Type: Letters

Primary Sidebar

Most Recent Articles

  • Free cyber-defence tools from NCSC
  • Learning from history
  • Grand Union Housing gets connected with Aico HomeLink
  • The silences in the system: Predicting and preventing damp and mould
  • Looking back and to the future: Cyberthreats in social housing
  • Hyde signs repairs contract with Totalmobile
  • Fuelling high performance automation
  • Morgan Sindall’s Carbon Zero decarbonisation tool
  • An ethical approach to arrears
  • Housing and the ever-evolving workplace
  • Supporting residents with home safety risks
  • Less innovation & more service design at RHP
  • Ateb Group outsources IT help desks to Central Networks
  • Capital Letters partners with Evo Digital to tackle homelessness
  • Calico appoints M247 for digital transformation
  • 24/7 care requires 24/7 technology
  • Govtech trends for 2023
  • Are you ready for business process automation?
  • Lincoln council moves to the cloud with Civica
  • Why do IT business improvement projects fail?
  • Flagship and Ebrik launch augmented reality app
  • Following the golden thread
  • Setting the standard for carbon-monoxide protection
  • The business case for data
  • Digital twins – When, not if…
  • Using data to build communities
  • The cyber-security jigsaw’s missing piece – Managed detection & response
  • Cyber-security challenges in housing
  • Digitalising retrofits with SHDF & HomeLink
  • Tips for improving care and support

Footer

Housing Technology
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Contact
  • Free Subscription
  • Book an event
  • Blog
  • Search All Articles
  • Research
  • Update Your Subscription
  • Privacy Policy

Welcome to the housing Technology – Trusted Information For Business Professionals in HOusing

Housing Technology is the leading technology information service for the UK housing sector and local governments. We have always believed in the fundamental importance of how the UK’s social housing providers use technology to improve their tenants’ lives.

Subscribe to Housing Technology to gain market-leading research, unsurpassed peer networking opportunities and a greater understanding of your role to transform your business.

Copyright © The Intelligent Business Company 2022 | Terms and Conditions | Privacy Policy
Housing Technology is published by the The Intelligent Business Company. A company with limited liability. Registered in England No. 4958057 | Vat Registion No. 833 0069 55.

Registered Business Address: Hoppingwood Farm, Robin Hood Way, London, SW20 0AB | Telephone: +44 (0) 20 8336 2293

htc23 pop banner