Former house builder chiefs’ for-profit social housing provider becomes registered provider

Flint Housing was established in 2020 by Stephen Stone, the chief executive of Crest Nicholson between 2005 and 2018, and William Rucker, who was previously chair of the builder.

The new organisation’s chief executive, Eugene Schreider, said it aimed to deliver around 1,000 new affordable homes over the next three years “with strong ambitions beyond that”.

Mr Schreider, previously a corporate financial advisor at investment banking giant Lazard, is joined on Flint’s board by non-executive directors Sir Peter Dixon and John Knevett.

Sir Peter and Mr Knevett add considerable experience from the social housing sector, with Sir Peter having been the former chair of 45,000-home Optivo and the Housing Corporation. Mr Knevett was previously the chief commercial officer at 38,000-home A2Dominion.

Flint Housing joins a rapidly growing number of for-profit operations – many owned by major private companies, including Legal & General and Blackstone – that have registered with the regulator, or are seeking to do so.

However, there are also some developers that have set up their own for-profit arms including retirement giant McCarthy & Stone and Hopkins Homes.

At May’s Social Housing Finance Conference, Will Perry, director of strategy at the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), said that 53 for-profit providers had already joined the register, with a similar number “in the pipeline”.

Data published in February 2021 by the RSH revealed that the number of social homes owned by for-profit providers rose by almost 75% – from 5,342 to 9,313 – in the year to March 2020.