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Northern Irish leaders confirm plans to bring forward housing association reclassification bill
Northern Ireland’s first and deputy first ministers have promised to bring forward legislation preventing housing associations’ debt from being shifted onto the region’s public balance sheet.
In a joint statement issued on Monday, first minister Arlene Foster and deputy first minister Michelle O’Neill said they intend to introduce a Housing (Amendment) Bill before the end of the current Northern Ireland Assembly session in summer.
They said the bill will “make the changes urgently required to address the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) classification of housing associations to the public sector”.
It is not clear whether the bill will end the Right to Buy – known in Northern Ireland as the House Sales Scheme – for the Northern Ireland Housing Executive as well as housing associations.
According to Northern Ireland’s Department for Communities, the House Sales Scheme is one aspect of the government’s control over housing associations in the region that motivated the ONS to classify them as public.
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The threat of reclassification has hung over associations in Northern Ireland since it was announced by the ONS in 2016.
If it went ahead, the sector’s £1bn of debt would be scored against the region’s budget, severely hampering housing associations’ ability to borrow for development.
Ministers in England, Scotland and Wales quickly moved to pass legislation to deregulate housing associations enough for the ONS to reverse its decision, but no such action was taken in Northern Ireland because of a three-year political deadlock that ended last month.
UK Treasury put a derogation – a mechanism to delay laws taking effect – in place to postpone the ONS reclassification of Northern Irish housing associations, which is set to expire at the end of March.
Before ministers returned to Stormont, the UK government was intending to take the highly unusual step of legislating on Northern Ireland’s behalf to solve the reclassification issue.
Ms Foster and Ms O’Neill also confirmed plans to bring forward a Welfare Mitigation/Social Sector Size Criteria Bill to continue bedroom tax mitigation payments beyond the end of March.
Communities minister Deirdre Hargey announced last week that the Northern Ireland Executive had agreed to bring forward such legislation.
This was a key promise in the New Decade, New Approach Deal agreed between Northern Ireland’s political parties and the British and Irish governments ahead of the Northern Ireland Assembly reforming.
Among the eight bills expected to be tabled by the summer recess, a Domestic Abuse Bill will also create a new domestic abuse offence for controlling or coercive behaviour – closing a gap in Northern Irish law, which covers physical violence only.
