The Week in Housing: Warning over asylum housing, Hyde bids for private rental portfolio and Home Group appoints new boss

This week, our chief reporter Eliza Parr interviewed all five of Homes England’s executive regional directors. It provides a great insight into how the agency’s plan is going to link development and regeneration more closely to local priorities and devolved leadership.

The government revealed it is delaying key reforms to council planning committees by a month and has promised to review the shake-up within two years.

On the regulation side, Kate Dodsworth has been promoted to deputy chief executive at the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). Ms Dodsworth is well known in the sector, having been a housing association chief executive before moving to the RSH to take a leading role in establishing the consumer regime.

For other appointment news, we published our monthly round-up of senior job changes in the sector.

Government officials are exploring funding solutions to help social landlords with heat network upgrades. 

And there was some intriguing data that showed council areas controlled by Reform UK have some of the highest uptake of home renewables in England.

Away from politics, some eye-catching merger and acquisition news came in the form of rumours that Hyde is among the bidders for Notting Hill Genesis’ private rented sector portfolio.

Watch this space.

Fellow G15 landlord Metropolitan Thames Valley reported impressive completion figures, but saw its annual surplus drop 40%.

A reminder of the stretched finances of some major landlords came as the English regulator reported that sales of fixed assets – primarily homes held for rent – have hit a record level.

This has not deterred some landlords though, as Bernicia secured a new £100m loan from Barclays to boost housebuilding efforts.

City of Edinburgh Council is planning to spend nearly £208m on housing development and stock upgrades this financial year, which includes £70m on its high-rise blocks. 

In Northern Ireland, ministers were urged to act after a warning that an estimated 4,000 social homes could be subject to tenancy fraud amid a lack of coherent data.

In other news, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea awarded a £74m contract for major refurbishment work on three blocks close to Grenfell Tower.

The Building Safety Regulator revealed updated figures from its work checking high-risk buildings – new and old. 

The RSH said it is planning to de-register a small lease-based provider over its failure to meet the Governance and Financial Viability Standard.

Slough Borough Council agreed to enter into a voluntary undertaking with the RSH in an effort to regain compliance.

Finally, Home Group revealed who it has appointed to replace long-serving chief executive Mark Henderson.

Have a good weekend.

James Wilmore, freelance news editor

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