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Bradford Council forced to reopen HRA following MHCLG guidance

Bradford Council will reopen its Housing Revenue Account (HRA) for the first time in more than a decade, following advice issued by the government earlier this year.

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Bradford Town Hall (picture: Getty)
Bradford Town Hall (picture: Getty)
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Bradford Council has joined Liverpool, Peterborough and Sunderland in becoming the latest council to reopen its Housing Revenue Account #ukhousing

MHCLG: all councils that have more than 200 social dwellings in their stock must open an HRA #ukhousing

The council, which transferred all its housing stock to Bradford Community Housing Trust in 2003, started to deliver new council housing in 2010, but was permitted by the government to hold stock without the need for an HRA.

However, the latest guidance from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), issued in March this year, requires local authorities to open an HRA when their stock exceeds 200 social dwellings.


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According to Bradford Council, which has built 428 homes for rent since 2010, correspondence with MHCLG confirmed that it needed to account for its housing stock within an HRA from next year.

The HRA is a ringfenced account that takes its income from rents and service charges collected from tenants. This can be spent only on building and maintaining housing.

This year, several councils, including Liverpool, Peterborough and Sunderland, announced plans to reopen their HRAs and build council housing for the first time in a generation.

Last month, exclusive research by Inside Housing revealed that councils plan to deliver 80,000 homes over the next five years, in a move that would see them quadruple development.

Bradford Council said that officers across housing, finance and legal are now working together to determine how the change will affect their social housing development plans.

The latest MHCLG guidance states that local authorities can hold up to 199 social homes outside the HRA, but must write to the housing secretary to gain approval to do so.

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