Common ground

As we heard at Social Housing’s inaugural conference with Room 151, the treasury and finance publication for local government, the ability to borrow more is very welcome, but social housing still needs subsidy and the dysfunctional elements of the housing market haven’t gone away overnight.

There also remains the financial sticking point that borrowing to invest in a property that may need to be sold at a significant discount through the Right to Buy doesn’t quite add up.

For housing associations, the debt cap news can perhaps offer something more than numbers: a golden opportunity to reconfigure relationships.

In their Building Bridges report last year, the Chartered Institute of Housing, the Association of Retained Council Housing and Vivid identified four key areas that would support cross-sector partnership working: leadership and partnership culture; allocations and homelessness; land and housing supply; and affordability and rents.

So what do housing associations have to offer?

And where do they see themselves in the grand scheme of things on major infrastructure and regeneration projects, with council partners that have a wider portfolio of objectives and needs to fulfil?

For finance people, there may be further common ground – from loans and deposits, to activity in the debt capital markets and lessons learned around mitigating the risks of commercial endeavours.

Shortly before the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy was mooting new guidance aimed at quelling the commercial property ‘craze’ in local government, the English social housing regulator published its Sector Risk Profile report reminding us all that “more registered providers than ever” are reliant on sales income to fund their development programmes (a £74bn forecast investment in development across all tenures over the next five years, supported by £39bn of sales receipts).

There is much opportunity in the strategic partnerships being announced by Homes England and the Greater London Authority.

But far more strategically significant in the longer term is the ability for cross-sector working.

As neatly summarised during our conference, “there’s enough of a housing crisis for us all to solve”.

Next month we bring together the worlds of housing associations and equity investors at the Social Housing Annual Conference. Click here for details