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Sovereign retains credit rating despite concern over development increase
Housing association Sovereign has held onto its credit ratings from both the Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s (S&P) agencies despite the latter’s concerns over its development ambitions.
The agencies kept their respective A2 and A+ assessments of Sovereign, in judgements published yesterday.
S&P, though, reduced Sovereign’s outlook rating to ‘negative’, citing its plans to expand its development programme from around 1,200 homes last year towards 1,900 homes by 2022, together with the potential impact of Brexit. Moody’s said Sovereign’s outlook remained ‘stable’.
Sovereign owns some 57,000 homes in South and South West England and plans to build around 1,600 homes this year.
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Mark Washer, chief executive at Sovereign, said: “This continued recognition of our financial strength is great news for Sovereign. We have an extremely robust business plan and are committed to using our financial capacity to provide more new homes.
“We believe we’ve got the right balance between underlying financial strength and our ambition to buy land, build homes and invest in the communities where we work.”
Sovereign received a G1 rating for governance and V1 for viability in April after an in-depth assessment by the Regulator of Social Housing.
