The RSH Quarterly Survey suggests that economic uncertainty brought about by coronavirus has caused registered providers revise downwards forecast expenditure on development, while unsold market and shared ownership homes increased.
Meanwhile Wates Construction, which has maintenance and construction contracts with a number of housing associations and councils, is the first to announce redundancies – it has announced that approximately 300 jobs have been cut, accounting for 8% of the company’s entire workforce.
It follows a series of measures taken in early April to mitigate the impact of the crisis on the business, which included putting roughly a quarter of its staff on the government’s furlough scheme.
Homes England has commissioned a study into modern methods of construction (MMC) which will monitor the delivery of 1,500 homes.
Housing Associations (HAs) have heard that they need to restart planned repairs by the government.
HAs warned that routine repairs should not resume at normal rates after the housing minister wrote directly to social housing tenants, to announce the return of non-urgent repairs. Former advice in March urged landlords to fix or inspect only “serious and urgent issues” and take a “pragmatic, common sense” approach to non-urgent repairs
Key players in the sector have been speaking to Inside Housing about a restart, they said:
“Keith Simpson, chair of the Direct Works Forum, which represents associations and councils that deliver their own repairs and maintenance works, argued that it was too early to return to routine repairs.
He said: “This is not the time to pretend that COVID-19 has gone away – we are no different this week than we were last week. There is little need to do general repairs unless you have got absolute control over PPE [personal protective equipment].”
Construction giant Kier, which has maintenance contracts with several housing associations, said it was planning a “phased approach” for its return to work, which is to be done in line with Public Health England guidance and the Construction Leadership Council’s site operating procedures.
Catherine Ryder, director of policy and research at the National Housing Federation, said: “We know the sector is working hard to get repairs and maintenance services up and running again, but adapting to new circumstances and working through backlogs that have built up over the past eight weeks of lockdown will take some time.” “