The Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government
(MHCLG) have written to local housing authorities inviting them to
take part in an important survey about their future house building
plans.
The government is committed to increasing the supply of
affordable housing and ARCH has lobbied government for the
introduction of a number of policy changes to support local
authority housing development including the lifting of the Housing
Revenue Account (HRA) borrowing cap in 2018, to the recent
introduction of greater freedom on the spending of Right to Buy
receipts on replacement homes.
ARCH has been working with senior officials in the Local
Authority Housing Team at MHCLG and we are keen to learn more about
councils' future housebuilding plans to understand the scale of the
sector as housebuilders, and to understand how building plans may
be impacted by the recent policy changes and emerging
challenges.
To this end MHCLG officials wrote to local authority Section 151
officers on 21 August inviting councils to complete a housebuilding
survey and submit returns by 1st October.
The survey has been developed with sector partners including
ARCH, the Local Government Association and the National Federation
of Almos and asks for information about councils' housing delivery
forecast over the next five years (the estimated numbers and
delivery profile, how delivery will be funded, and the challenges
faced around delivery) - and includes both development in the
Housing Revenue Account (HRA) and through other delivery mechanisms
such a local housing companies.
This is an opportunity for local authorities to set out their
ambitions and remaining barriers to their housebuilding programmes
and ARCH would encourage all member councils to respond to the
survey and to copy your survey response to ARCH ( john.bibby@arch-housing.org.uk ).