In December 2016 ARCH, the National Federation of ALMOs (NFA),
the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and the Chartered
Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) wrote to Gavin
Barwell, Housing Minister, to make
a proposal for stimulating local authority investment in
housing. The proposal included three potential pilot
authorities - ARCH members, Sheffield City Council and
Stoke-on-Trent City Council and NFA member, Newark and Sherwood
Homes.
The idea was that these authorities (and potentially many more
if the idea were made widely available) would commit to significant
additional development programmes in exchange for agreed
concessions on rents policy, right to buy receipts and borrowing
caps. Such concessions would enable stock retained authorities to
release the potential for investment in their housing revenue
accounts without necessarily requiring additional government
grant.
The government's Housing White Paper published in February 2017,
gave some encouragement to our proposal. Although it contained no
proposals for a universal increase on borrowing caps, it did give a
commitment to set out, in due course, a rent policy for social
landlords for the period beyond 2020. Crucially the White Paper
promised to "back local authorities to build" and stated that the
government were "interested in the scope for bespoke housing deals
with authorities in high demand areas which have a genuine ambition
to build".
On 2 March 2017, at the invitation of the Housing Minister,
representatives from ARCH/NFA/CIH/CIPFA and the three authorities
involved met with officials at DCLG to open discussions on the
proposals submitted. Those discussions were very positive and while
it is still early days, no agreement was reached on what such
bespoke deals might look like it was agreed to continue discussions
with DCLG and a further meeting has been arranged for
mid-April.
Following the meeting ARCH/NFA/CIH/CIPFA issued the following
joint press statement:
"The government said in its housing white paper it would
consider making deals with individual councils so that they can
once again play an important role in housing delivery.
"This is something that our organisations have been making
the case for, for some time now, and it's excellent to see
government follow up on that promise by getting local authorities
and industry bodies around the table to work out a way
forward.
"Together with ARCH members Sheffield City Council,
Stoke-on-Trent City Council and NFA member Newark & Sherwood
Homes we met with officials from DCLG last week and we look forward
to continuing to discuss with government how we can turn this
proposal into concrete actions that will back councils to build the
much needed new homes the country needs."
We will keep ARCH members advised of progress via future ARCH
bulletins. In the meantime, John Bibby, ARCH Chief Executive, would
like to hear from any other ARCH member who have a genuine ambition
to build and might be interested in entering into similar bespoke
deals.
If your council is interested and would like to know more,
please contact John via email at john.bibby@arch-housing.org.uk
before Thursday 20 April when we are next due to meet DCLG
officials.