Housing association prepares for post-Brexit Kent traffic chaos

Yesterday the Regulator of Social Housing wrote to housing associations warning them to ensure that its no-deal Brexit stress-testing was robust.

Sarah Smith, finance officer at Optivo, which owns homes in Kent, told Inside Housing: “We absolutely want to maintain the service to our residents. That’s critical.

“It might take us a little bit longer to get around the county but it’s not a case of shutting down at all. The focus has to be maintain the service.”

This is just one example of a housing association taking a specific approach to Brexit stress-testing, which has also seen the large association Riverside plan to bring money held in Ireland back to the UK.

Carol Matthews, chief executive of Riverside, told Inside Housing: “We’ve got overnight funds that sit in Ireland.

“We’ll be bringing them home to sit in London or wherever, just in case there’s any problems where the money markets freeze and we can’t get access to overnight funds. It’s an ‘in extremis’ measure, but it’s about making sure that we can get to money.”

Across the social housing sector, associations are stress-testing the possible impacts of Brexit. According to the Bank of England, if there is what it called a “disorderly Brexit”, these could include inflation levels hitting 6.5% and house prices falling by 30%.

Housing associations are preparing for the impact that rising inflation could have on their building and repair costs.

Those with larger market sale programmes have also been putting in place potential mitigation measures for a housing market crash.

Ms Smith told Inside Housing that if house prices fall, Optivo will look to switch some of its market sale homes to affordable tenures.

Kelsey Walker, a director at Savills Housing Consultancy, added: “It’s not necessarily about those providers with the biggest sales programmes. It’s going to factor in where they are. At the point of exit, how much development have they got committed?”