Servite completes £60m homes sale

The housing association announced this week that it had completed the transfer of nearly 1,800 homes - more than 10 per cent of its stock - to nine bidders, in a deal worth £60 million.

The Tenant Services Authority confirmed it was the biggest example of stock rationalisation to date. It was unable to confirm the size of the previous biggest deal.

Servite was left reeling last year when the Housing Corporation downgraded its assessments for governance and viability from green to amber and withdrew £10 million of funding. The following month, it emerged that Servite had fallen £5.2 million into the red in 2007, and the corporation encouraged a cost-cutting plan.

As part of its recovery plan, the association started to withdraw from the Merseyside area last July. It split its portfolio into geographical chunks of around 200 properties, and received more than 50 bids from 14 local social landlords.

The successful bidders were: Adactus Housing Group, Alpha (RSL) Ltd, Cosmopolitan Housing Association, Helena Homes, Knowsley Housing Trust, Liverpool Housing Trust, Maritime, Plus Dane Group and the South Liverpool Housing Trust.

Of the 100 schemes involved, 60 per cent were sheltered, assisted living or supported housing.

Malcolm O’Brien, director of corporate services at Servite Houses, said: ‘The process has been a fundamental part of the Transform Servite programme which is reshaping Servite by reducing the breadth of activities, reducing costs and raising quality levels so that they become equally high across all service areas.

‘While it is always sad to move out of an area in which you have worked for many years, this was the best decision as it increases the focus on local provision and enables us to further develop as a leading provider of quality homes and services.’

Servite now operates in London, the east and west midlands and west Sussex.

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