Ask the experts

A: Adrian Waite Stock transfer has been managed during recent years through a series of bidding rounds. Local authorities that wish to do large-scale or partial stock transfers applied for inclusion on the stock transfer programme at the time of the round.

The previous government’s last bidding round was in 2008. There have been no bidding rounds in 2009 or 2010.

Furthermore, their consultation papers on reform of council housing finance proposed a ‘level playing field’ between stock retention and stock transfer in future in terms of the resources that would be available.

This suggested that future stock transfers would only be able to go ahead based on the same level of expenditure and investment that would be possible with stock retention. This would have removed the major reason why stock transfers have taken place and would probably have resulted in few, if any, further housing stock transfers taking place.

The new government has yet to make a statement on stock transfer. There are no references to stock transfer in the coalition agreement, the Conservative Party’s manifesto or policy green paper on housing or the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto.

However, the government has undertaken to review the housing revenue account and is in the process of reviewing the previous government’s ‘level playing field’ proposals.

Presumably, when the government has finished reviewing the housing revenue account we can expect it to make an announcement about the future of HRA financing and so the future of stock transfer.

If I was to make a prediction, it would be that we will see some more rounds of stock transfer.

Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have been supportive of transfer proposals in the past and this can be expected to continue in future.

Adrian Waite is managing director of AWICS, a management consultancy for public service providers