MHCLG Tenders For Partner On Potential £6bn Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is tendering for a delivery partner contract to deliver a potential £6bn Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme, scheduled to get under way next year. The new Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme requires a delivery partner to raise £3bn of capital from investors, with a potential further £3bn top-up “at the guarantor’s sole discretion”. It will then on-lend the funds to both not-for-profit and for-profit registered providers and manage the loan portfolio over the lifetime of the borrowings, which is expected to be 39 years. Read more on the Social Housing website.

https://www.socialhousing.co.uk/news/mhclg-tenders-for-partner-on-potential-6bn-affordable-homes-guarantee-scheme-64319?utm_source=Housing60&utm_medium=email&utm_content=article_link&utm_campaign=H60

New £3bn Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme Announced In Spring Statement

Chancellor Philip Hammond has used his Spring Statement to announce a new £3bn Affordable Homes Guarantee scheme. Hammond told the Commons the scheme would support delivery of around 30,000 affordable homes. And some £717m from the Housing Infrastructure Fund will unlock up to 37,000 new homes on sites in West London, Cheshire, Didcot, and Cambridge, Hammond said. Also announced were measures to help developers future-proof new build homes to meet low carbon heating and a Call for Evidence on an SME energy efficiency scheme. Read more on 24housing.

https://www.24housing.co.uk/news/breaking-new-3bn-affordable-homes-guarantee-scheme/

£500 Million Funding Deal To Deliver Over 4,000 Affordable Homes

Housing minister Kris Hopkins has welcomed a deal that will release £500 million additional funding to build new affordable homes across the country. The new investment, secured through an agreement with the European Investment Bank, will help deliver up to 4,300 new affordable homes to rent. The funding will form part of the £3.5 billion Affordable Housing Guarantees programme, which enables housing associations to use a government guarantee to secure private investment at more competitive rates than they would otherwise obtain. Read more on 24dash.

Funding To Deliver Almost 14,000 New Affordable Homes

Ministers have announced a multi-million pound boost to build thousands of new affordable homes across the country.  Sixty-nine different housing associations and developers will each receive a share of £220 million to deliver almost 14,000 new affordable homes outside London. The move is part of wider government efforts to get Britain building, which will lead to the fastest annual rate of affordable house building for 2 decades.  The funding is part of the expanded £450 million Affordable Housing Guarantees which will support up to £3.5 billion in government debt guarantees to deliver thousands of new homes.  Of the almost 14,000 homes this money will help deliver, the majority will be available at an affordable rent with 2,000 of those available to buy through shared ownership. Read more on the Gov.uk website.

Housing: Cooperatives – Parliamentary Written Answer

Cathy Jamieson: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (1) what steps he is taking to increase the number of housing co-operatives in the UK;

(2) what financial support his Department makes available for housing co-operatives;

(3) what estimate he has made of the numbers of housing co-operatives in (a) the UK and (b) Scotland.

Mr Prisk: This Government supports the spread of strong, financially robust and democratically accountable housing co-operatives.  The CLG does not hold a central register of housing co-operatives in the UK or Scotland. There are currently over 200 housing co-operatives in England registered with the Homes and Communities Agency as providers of affordable housing.

Housing co-operatives that are registered with the Homes and Communities Agency may be eligible to bid for funding through the Affordable Homes Guarantee, Build to Rent and Custom Build programmes. Funding was also available to Community and Voluntary organisations, which include housing co-operatives, to bring empty homes back into use as affordable housing, as well as from the community led element of the Affordable Homes Programme.

More broadly, my Department, through the Homes and Communities Agency, continues to engage with the community led sector, including the Confederation of Cooperative Housing, to support them with their plans to expand the sector.

Housing and Growth – Statement by Eric Pickles

The following are quotes from a written statement on Housing and Growth by Eric Pickles.

*Increasing investment in the private rented sector – [Government] will be investing £200 million in housing sites to ensure that the high-quality rented homes that are needed are available to institutional investors quickly. [A] taskforce [will] bring together developers, management bodies and institutional investors to broker deals and deliver more rented homes.

*Affordable Housing Guarantees and tackling empty homes - We will be extending the use of guarantees to cover borrowing needed to deliver more affordable homes.  We also intend to … bring an additional 5,000 existing empty homes back into use. In total we will invest another £300 million.

*Accelerating large housing schemes - Government will work in partnership with local authorities, scheme promoters and communities to accelerate delivery of locally-supported, major housing sites.

*Getting surplus public sector land back into use - Government will accelerate the release of surplus public sector land by strengthening the role of HCA outside London through a targeted programme of transfers from other Government Departments and agencies. We will also work to accelerate disposals by preparing the land for market and providing a single 'shop window' for all surplus public sector land

*Reducing planning delays - We propose to legislate to allow applications to be decided by the Planning Inspectorate, if the local authority has a track record of consistently poor performance in the speed or quality of its decisions. We will be working with the Local Government Association to increase the use of Planning Performance Agreements for major schemes - which commit both applicants and planning authorities to a clear timetable for determining proposals.

*Reducing the cumulative burden of red tape - It is vital that the affordable housing element of Section 106 agreements negotiated during different economic conditions is not allowed to undermine the viability of sites and prevent any construction of new housing. The Government will now introduce legislation…which will allow any developer of sites which are unviable because of the number of affordable homes, to appeal with immediate effect. The Planning Inspectorate will be instructed to assess how many affordable homes would need to be removed from the Section 106 agreement for the site to be viable in current economic conditions.

*Getting empty offices into use - We will introduce permitted development rights to enable change of use from commercial to residential purposes.

Read more on the CLG website