In July 2016 CIH (Chartered Institute of Housing) and CIPFA
(Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy) published
a report "Investing in council housing" which
examined the 2012 "self-financing settlement" that put in place a
robust long-term plan for council house building. The Report argued
that successive policy changes have cut rental income so that
today, just 45,000 new homes are expected, no more than were
planned before the settlement was made. ARCH provided information
and evidence to the report authors and is referenced at various
points in the report.
We brought together a representative cross-section of ARCH
member councils and NFA Almo members to participate in a round table discussion with CIH, CIPFA,
ARCH and the NFA in September 2016 to examine how best to take
forward the recommendation in the CIH/CIPFA report with a view to
making representations to Government and in particular to examine
what commitments could be made to the Government to improve housing
supply in return for commitments that would provide more stable HRA
Business Plans.
Following further work with CIH/CIPFA and a number of ARCH and
NFA members who showed an interest in making the case to Government
demonstrating what could be achieved by way of additional housing
supply in return for increased flexibilities in the HRA, we have
been working on submission of a joint Paper to DCLG seeking to open
up discussions with Government on the potential for greater HRA
flexibilities to support the Government's housebuilding
targets.
Together with CIH, CIPFA and the NFA we have put together a
well-argued case for flexibilities in government policy, to be
applied at individual local authority level, which has the
potential to unleash resources that otherwise will go unused to
support the building of more homes.
We look forward to a formal response from Government and hope to
meet officials from DCLG in the near future to discuss the paper in
the hope of persuading Government of the merits of relaxing
national rules on HRA in return for a commitment on increased new
build.
We will keep our members informed of the Government's response
to our proposals.