Collaboration is key

The Labour leader’s pledge to build half a million council houses highlights an important question: what is the role of councils in housing and housebuilding?

Across the country Councils are building again, by themselves and in collaboration with housing associations, developers and investors. Extensive reforms under successive governments have provided Councils with powers, permissions and access to billions of pounds of cheap money to build the homes our country and communities need. Councils are increasingly using these powers and resources.

All district, borough and unitary Councils have a full and broad role in housing delivery. The work they are doing deserves to be noted and celebrated. Councils play an active role in enabling housing delivery through granting individual planning permissions and setting the conditions for housebuilding. Councils can waive or vary conditions to help developments take place within the context of their own particular housing market challenges. In this way, they make developments happen which wouldn’t otherwise happen, like stalled sites. Councils invest in their local area infrastructure, for example by securing advance road building in relation to a proposed area of growth or by applying for specific public funding for major works.

Homes are directly paid for by Councils from affordable housing or other housing receipts. Homes are also directly financed by Councils for investment through the Housing Revenue Account and Prudential Borrowing. Some Councils have wholly owned investment vehicles. Other councils take part in a range of joint ventures with housing associations, institutional investors and developers.

Councils who own land may choose to build directly on it or to put land into their housing partnership. Housing partnerships can generate profits and provide an opportunity to control the timing and type of housing being delivered.

This was the question – the role of councils in housing supply – which was at the heart of the UK Government’s Elphicke-House Report 2015. We concluded that Ccouncils were central to housing success and were doing a great deal more than is generally recognised at the national political level. We articulated the role of the housing delivery enabler, which is the council that makes the practical difference to ensure the delivery of homes needed for their community.

At the Housing & Finance Institute, we work with some of the ‘best of the best’ councils: trailblazers who are actively shaping, promoting and delivering homes for their communities. The HFi’s national Housing Business Ready programme shares knowledge and skills to help more councils support housing delivery across all housing markets. Councils are doing a fantastic job but we can’t expect them to solve the housing crisis by themselves. A diversified housing policy which includes councils, housing associations, investors and developers working together will be more effective in delivering more homes faster than setting one part of the industry against another. We need collaboration to bring together political will, skills, money and knowledge within a local area. There is plenty for everyone to do to deliver the additional homes our country needs.

Natalie Elphicke, chief execuitve of the Housing & Finance Institute