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Government’s £300m Community Housing Fund faces ‘serious underallocation’
A £300m government programme for community-led housing could be “seriously underallocated” with homes left unfinished if it is not extended, the National Community Land Trust (CLT) Network has warned.
Tom Chance, director of the National CLT Network, said the Community Housing Fund was expected to be worth £60m annually for five years when first announced in 2016, but will actually run for just 18 months.
The fund was unveiled by David Cameron’s government at the 2016 spring Budget.
However, the bidding did not open until July 2018 and will close at the end of 2019 – with all awarded funding needing to be spent by March 2020.
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Mr Chance said: “When the programme was first announced in 2016 it was a five-year programme but because of delays to opening the bidding we’ve ended up with a very short window for the funding of about 18 months.
“We want government to extend the closing date, to be comparable to the deadline they have got in London [the mayor’s programme runs until 2022].
“As it stands, it’s not going to be running for long enough so it will be very seriously under allocated and they will have a huge underspend by 2020.
“When the government launched the programme [former housing minister] Alok Sharma spoke about helping the sector to grow and building a certain number of homes, but if it closes so soon it will fail to deliver the number of homes and will fail to grow the sector.”
The National CLT Network has claimed that many of the 3,500 homes currently in the pipeline through the Community Housing Fund could fall through if the spend deadline is not extended, as many will require more capital funding next year and beyond.
London mayor Sadiq Khan announced a £38m fund for community-led housing last month, with that programme running until 2023.
Community-led housing allows groups of volunteers to develop their own homes, typically through CLTs or housing co-operatives.
A spokesperson for Homes England, which is administering the fund, said: “The Community Housing Fund is currently scheduled to close in March 2020.
“While the fund was launched relatively recently, there is still time for many community-led schemes to access funding.
“Decisions on funding for 2020-21 onwards are a matter for the Spending Review.”
The agency added that a decision on whether to reallocate any unspent money for the fund to another programme would have to be taken by the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
