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L&G to pick panels of housing associations to manage stock
Institutional investor Legal & General (L&G) plans to pick panels of housing associations to manage the affordable housing it acquires through its for-profit company, Inside Housing can reveal.
L&G – which has £984bn of assets under management – announced a for-profit provider of social housing, L&G Affordable Homes, in April with a plan to become the sector’s biggest builder, delivering 3,000 homes a year.
It will choose five panels of housing associations, one each for the South East, South West, Midlands, North East and North West of England.
Each panel will have “three or four” housing associations on it, Simon Century, head of affordable housing at L&G, told Inside Housing, all which should be “best in class”.
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It hopes to start picking these housing associations in around a month, start securing its first sites in the next couple of months and for its first tenants to move in at the end of 2019.
L&G said that it would consider housing associations with a national remit and locally based ones, as long as they understand the regions in which they work.
Mr Century added: “A key thing we’re looking for when we find those housing association partners are those that are willing to embrace some of the customer experiences which are going on outside of the sector.
“We’ve seen a lot of it already. When you look across at retail platforms or wider housing platforms there are some good learnings there.
“For us, it’s about thinking: ‘What does a 21st century social housing operator really look like? What can we take that’s brilliant in the sector at the moment and what can we improve?’”
L&G Affordable Homes also revealed that it intends to pursue development partnerships with housing associations and local authorities, as well as developing sites on its own.
It plans to bid for some Section 106 affordable housing, which developers are required to build when they apply for planning permission for schemes, but also to lead its own developments.
In August, the provider hired Sovereign’s development director, Ben Denton, as managing director and has also hired a number of other executives this month.
This news follows the recent announcement by the world’s largest property investor, Blackstone, launched a second affordable housing company, Sage Partnerships, with the intention of funding the development of new affordable housing.
For-profit providers of affordable housing have boomed this year – with a 149% rise in the number of homes these providers manage in 2017/18.
Alongside the Budget on Monday, the government has launched a call for evidence from private providers, seeking models for using private finance to build shared ownership without grant. Mr Century said L&G was “definitely” interested in contributing to this review.
