Government 'Cracking Social Housing Finance Pillars'

Government reforms are cracking the pillars which stabilise the social housing finance market, one of the sector’s largest lenders has warned. Lenders are particularly concerned about how plans to end direct payment of housing benefit to tenants will damage the strength of social housing finance world, Paul Stevens, head of housing finance at Santander Corporate, told the National Housing Federation finance conference. He named the four main pillars of social housing finance as robust regulation, the fact that loans were fully securitised, the grant subsidy which supported housing development and the income generated by housing benefit. ‘Generally, in the new world some of those pillars are beginning to crack, some of them to a greater degree than others,’ he told the conference. Read more on Inside Housing.