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Large housing association sees completions drop by 40%
Sovereign Housing Association’s completions have fallen by 40% in the nine-month period to December 2020.
The social landlord, which owns and manages 60,000 homes in southern England, completed 802 homes in Q3, down from 1,355 in the same period last year. Of these homes, 776 were for affordable tenures.
Sovereign said that it is taking a more “land-led” approach to development and has now exchanged or completed the purchase of five land-led sites capable of providing more than 400 homes, of which 319 are for affordable tenures.
In the quarterly update, the landlord said: “These sites are a mixture of developments with the benefit of a detailed planning consent and those on which we will be progressing through the planning system to deliver homes in line with our new homes and place standard.”
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“In addition to this we have offers accepted on a further 10 land-led sites with over 600 units, that we’re progressing towards an exchange of contracts and subsequently will be submitting planning applications, either working with developer partners or as standalone Sovereign-led schemes.”
Sovereign’s overall surplus for the year to date dropped 17.9% from £68.9m to £56.6m.
Turnover during the nine-month period fell by 7.3% from £330.1m in Q3 2019/20 to £306m in Q3 2020/21.
Sovereign said: “Turnover and operating surplus are lower than last year primarily due to lower unit handovers reducing unit sales.
“Sovereign remains in a strong financial position with net debt of £1.9bn and available cash and committed liquidity facilities of £888m at the end of December 2020, which will provide sufficient liquidity to support our short-to-medium-term development plans.”
As part of its land-led approach to development, Sovereign purchased a £27m shopping centre in Bristol, the income from which it will use to fund development.
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