Hadden: Government 'very receptive' to deregistration

Neil Hadden, chief executive of Genesis and sponsor of the thinktank’s report, told Inside Housing he believes there is support at the highest levels of government for housing associations repaying grant at a discount and deregistering as social landlords.

In a wide-ranging interview, which is published in full today, Mr Hadden also slammed regulator the Homes and Communities Agency for a “wrong-headed” approach.

The Policy Exchange report, published last November, argued that 100,000 homes could be built by associations if they were allowed to deregister and given freedom to select their own tenants and set their own rents.

“I think there’s a lot in that report that should be re-read and revisited by a lot of people – there’s a lot of sense in there,” said Mr Hadden.

“[The government is] very, very receptive… I believe that they have a plan and the Budget was the first stage of the plan.”

Mr Hadden used the interview to set out his plans to stop developing homes for affordable and social rent in the future, and attempt to “reconfigure” current pipeline commitments to do so where it no longer “stacks up”.

Discussing the current regulatory framework, Mr Hadden criticised the move towards in-depth assessments – which will see the regulator carry out detailed reviews of providers’ businesses.

“I happen to think that the move towards in-depth assessments is wrong – it’s wrong-headed. I think it’s unnecessary. I think it’s a knee jerk reaction from the regulator and I think it’s not in tune with where I think we should be going,” he said.

Mr Hadden also expressed support for the government’s proposed extension of the Right to Buy, which he said could result in “more than one-for-one” replacement if associations were allowed to build homes of different tenures.

“We could get more shared ownership for each social rent property sold, so more households are housed. Isn’t that the name of the game?” he said.

The full interview is available here.