Trend report: registration and deregistration of housing providers

Deregistrations

Of the total 84 deregistrations in the three-year period, 78 were not-for-profit providers, five were councils and one was a for-profit organisation.

For-profit provider Ascent Housing deregistered in October 2023.

The organisation began as a joint venture between Harvest Housing Group (now Your Housing Group, following a merger with Arena Housing Group in 2012) and Staffordshire Moorlands District Council (SMDC). In January 2022, the 49 per cent share of Ascent’s property portfolio that SMDC owned was acquired by Your Housing, according to its 2022 annual report.

Your Housing Group declined to comment for details of the deregistration.

The five council deregistrations occurred on 31 March 2023 when many districts were abolished and replaced with unitary authorities.

Eden District Council joined the newly formed Westmorland and Furness Council. South Somerset, Somerset West and Taunton, and Sedgemoor councils joined Mendip to form Somerset Council. Selby District joined the new North Yorkshire Council.

In 2023, 15 local authorities registered as housing providers.

For not-for-profit providers, the reasons for deregistration vary.

Recent years have seen a handful of exempt accommodation providers deregistering after being found by the English regulator to have governance issues. One of the largest, New Roots, deregistered in January 2022 following non-compliant governance and financial viability gradings from the Regulator of Social Housing in 2020.

After whistleblowing to the board by senior staff over governance and mismanagement concerns, New Roots appointed new trustees in early 2019, launched an investigation and appointed a new chief executive later that year. The new board thought it could resolve the issues raised by the regulator in its judgement in 2020 and made progress on some of them.

However, in an April 2022 report that New Roots commissioned into lessons learned, the board said it had come to realise “it would take longer to satisfy the regulator’s requirements than anticipated, and what we had learnt in the process led us to question the financial viability of our business model and indeed its ability to deliver a safe service”.

In July 2021, New Roots decided to leave the exempt accommodation market.

Some older people’s housing specialists have struggled with falling occupancy during and following the pandemic. Ten Abbeyfield providers deregistered in the three-year period. Abbeyfield consists of more than 100 independent member entities.

A spokesperson for Abbeyfield says there had been a significant number of mergers between member organisations. A number of dormant entities have merged into the Abbeyfield Society, one of the largest member bodies, and are in the process of being deregistered. There are also mergers happening between other independent members, which would result in an entity being deregistered.

The spokesperson says there are some examples of a member organisation having to close without finding a merger partner, but overall, the deregistration activity is reflective of an effort to consolidate.

Abbeyfield’s 2024 accounts said it had decided to close 40 homes following consultations.

The organisation has since rebranded as Abbeyfield Living Society. It used to also act as an umbrella body for more than 100 other Abbeyfield members, but that role is now undertaken by Abbeyfield England.

Elsewhere on the Regulator of Social Housing’s list, some landlords deregistered as part of strategic restructuring of a larger provider.

One provider, THT and L&Q Community, was deregistered in May 2023 when Trafford Housing Trust was fully integrated into the L&Q group following the merger.

Registrations

The majority of new registrations in the past three years have been from local authorities (25). At the same time, 17 for-profits and 16 not-for-profit providers have entered the market.

Legal & General (L&G) registered four new providers in August 2024 as part of its affordable housing strategy under which it launched a new fund, with £125m committed across England.

“These new entities have been set up to support L&G’s growth and increasing institutional investment in the sector, enabling more affordable housing to be built across the country,” an L&G spokesperson tells Social Housing.

Many not-for-profit registrations occurred through the merger of two or more organisations. This was the case for Southern Housing in January 2023 following the merger of Southern Housing Group and Optivo. However, both of the original entities are also still registered separately.