Councils Reconsider Housing Association Links

The Right to Buy extension will ‘re-cast’ the relationship between local authorities and housing associations, councils have said. In return for the discount, there will be more flexibility to build homes for other tenures such as shared ownership and “portable discounts” for certain properties.  John Bibby, chief executive of the Association for Retained Council Housing, said if associations replace homes sold under the policy with low-cost home ownership homes, it could change the relationship with local authorities. “We will have to wait and see what that means for traditional type of agreements where councils gift land or provide discounted land to associations in return for nomination rights,” he said. He warned if associations become more commercial, councils could treat associations “like any other developer”.  Read more on Inside Housing.

Housing Costs Blamed For Unhappy Relationships

One in 10 UK adults feels unable to end an unhappy relationship because they cannot afford to rent or buy a place of their own, a charity's survey suggests. Shelter's poll of 4,490 adults also found 16% knew someone who had moved in with a new partner too soon after being unable to find their own accommodation. In addition, 57% of the 672 childless respondents had delayed starting a family, for up to five years, because of the high cost of housing. Read more on the Shelter website.

Conditional Tenancies Causing 'Cultural Shifts'

Conditional tenancies in the social housing sector are promoting "significant cultural shifts" for both housing providers and tenants, a new report has revealed. HACT's research focuses on changes in landlord/tenant relationships arising from conditional tenancy pilots taking place at a number of housing providers.  The report concludes that, whilst all the pilots were demonstrating initial success, no single 'one size fits all' approach to sustaining a tenancy long-term has yet emerged. The research looks in particular at how providers that have launched conditionality-based schemes are ensuring tenants are adequately supported to sustain their tenancies, and how tenancies are managed through their life-cycles. Download the report from the HACT website.