The Week in Housing: a big week for housing

Stephen Delahunty, Inside Housing’s news editor, has brought the sector’s responses together in a digestible format. It’s not giving anything away to say the consensus was that it represents a “historic” turning point.

Inside Housing also ran a webinar on what the Spending Review means for housing, with experts from across the sector, which you can rewatch here.

Also this week, the government promised to decriminalise rough sleeping. The repeal of the 1824 Vagrancy Act was described by Rushanara Ali, the minister for homelessness, as “a historic shift in how we’re responding to the rough-sleeping crisis”. Our story covers responses from the homelessness sector, and how this fits into a new approach.

Among the Spending Review’s announcements, the chancellor recommitted £13.2bn over five years for the government’s Warm Homes Plan. This was considered to be at risk before, but social landlords with an eye on their retrofit costs will be pleased to see it’s still in the plan.

Relatedly, this week we had a detailed analysis of what the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (now renamed the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund) achieved in its first three years.

The Spending Review also revealed that the sector will get equal access to £1bn in fire safety remediation funds, which is something housing associations have been advocating for. With the anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire tomorrow, it’s a sobering reminder that the crisis hasn’t been resolved and many people still live in unsafe blocks.

Earlier in the week, data from the End Our Cladding Scandal campaign group showed this includes blocks under 11 metres in height, some in the constituency of Matthew Pennycook, the housing minister.

There was also a significant legal settlement. Residents of a Notting Hill Genesis development received £550,000 in compensation over fire safety defects.

And in Scotland, a new Building Safety Levy designed to raise funds for cladding remediation with no linked developer will not be charged to social housing.

Scotland had other big news this week that put housing centre stage. Màiri McAllan returned from maternity leave to take up a newly created cabinet-level post as housing secretary.

First minister John Swinney spoke at the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations’ annual conference. Check out our dispatches for more on how that went.

Scotland has gone in a different policy direction to England until now, but could that be about to change? A new report has recommended lifting the ban on for-profits delivering social housing in the country, using investment from public sector pension funds.

In Wales, Pobl Group and Linc Cymru have formally merged – but what will the new association be called? We have the details here.

We also revealed that 20 large landlords wrote to the Treasury before the Spending Review to make the case for transferring their shared ownership homes to a newly created registered provider, a process they believed would “require the use of [Treasury] guarantees that should qualify for contingent liability treatment”. However, in an update after the story was published, it seems that some of the signatories have now stepped away from the shared ownership discussion group and are pursuing other options.

L&G has created a new role to oversee its housing business. Its housing assets are currently worth £5bn, but the firm has a target to double this to £10bn in the next three years.

And finally, Metropolitan Thames Valley has scooped up a new chief financial officer from Vivid.

Have a good weekend.

Jess McCabe, deputy editor, Inside Housing

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