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A round-up of the top stories this morning from Inside Housing and elsewhere
Top story: L&G names 14 housing associations to manage its for-profit provider homes
Investment giant Legal & General (L&G) has revealed the names of 14 housing associations it will use to manage the homes owned by its for-profit social housing provider, L&G Affordable Homes.
Inside Housing this morning has a full breakdown of which associations made the list and where they will be operating.
Together the housing associations, which all have regulatory ratings of ‘G1 V1’, manage 300,000 homes, L&G said their geographical ranges will allow them to allocate two for every UK council.
Last month, L&G Affordable Homes, which announced plans to register with the Regulator for Social Housing in April last year, increased its pipeline to nearly 3,500 by investing an extra £750m.
Council taken to court over allocation scheme that ‘removes homeless families from housing register’
Lambeth Council’s allocation scheme has been legally challenged for “removing a very significant proportion of homeless people” from its social housing register.
The council is being challenged through a judicial review for its ‘Temp to Settled’ policy, which offers to assign a higher level of priority to homeless households on the social housing register if they withdraw their homeless application and move into private rented accommodation.
The claimant, an anonymous resident who has been affected by the policy, is arguing that the scheme is disadvantageous to homeless families as many lose their local connection to the area before they have a chance to successfully bid.
Lambeth Council rejects the claims and said the scheme has helped 266 households secure suitable housing in 2018/19.
Asset management post-Grenfell – what housing associations need to know
With Grenfell, the Hackitt Review and the climate crisis all high on the sector’s agenda, asset managers have a lot to think about when deciding how to spend their limited resources.
Inside Housing speaks to experts in the sector about what they are doing now and how they are paying for it.
“I’m willing to bet that there isn’t a single tenant in the whole of the UK whose first waking thought in the morning is ‘I must check what my landlord is saying on Twitter’. It’s just not important to people.”
Paul Taylor, innovation coach at Bromford, explains why the sector should focus less on rebranding and more on delivering a good service for tenants.
Picture: Getty
A Conservative parliamentary candidate, who is contesting the marginal seat of Ashfield, said “nuisance” council tenants should be forced to live in tents and pick vegetables, the BBC reports.
Also in the BBC, is the news that a Victorian asylum in North Wales is to be turned into 300 homes by local developers Jones Brothers.
A Reuters poll found that annual house prices in Britain will not keep pace with inflation until 2021 and will fall in London this year due to Brexit uncertainty.
Picture: Getty
Labour council chiefs in Warrington have been accused of taking their “eye off the ball” over the delivery of affordable housing by their Liberal Democrat opponents, the Warrington Guardian reports.
A solicitor and former Tower Hamlets councillor has been sentenced to 16 months in prison for making false declarations on several social housing applications, the Law Society Gazette reports.