Kier Living has joined forces with fund manager Cheyne Capital and the Housing Growth Partnership – a joint venture between the HCA and Lloyds Bank – to launch the New Communities Partnership.

The new fund will offer finance to housing providers, in particular councils, to develop housing schemes without government grant.

It says it can finance schemes with any tenure split – including private sale, social rent, discounted rent and shared ownership – based on local need.

The rental homes will be owned by Cheyne Social Property Impact Fund, managed by Cheyne Capital, and leased to the council for a period of usually 20 years.

Councils will then pay an index-linked rent to the fund for the duration of the lease.

However, the direct involvement of the HCA through the Housing Growth Partnership marks out this scheme.

The fund is now entering talks with “a variety of councils” up and down the country and hopes to break ground on its first schemes before the end of the year. It will particularly target schemes on local authority land.

These landlords want tenant input!

According to Indside Housing:

“A group of nine housing associations will work to develop an alternative to the National Housing Federation merger code.

The nine associations (see box), including 6,000-home Soha Housing, have commissioned consultancy Housing Quality Network and law firm Anthony Collins Solicitors to come up with a new set of guidelines for mergers as they are unhappy with the NHF’s code, which they feel is too prescriptive.

They will also work with the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) to obtain input from tenants – something the landlords felt was missing from the NHF code.

The voluntary NHF merger code, published in December, was intended to promote transparency and dispel perceptions of inefficiency. However it has been criticised as too burdensome and biased towards predatory associations by some. An Inside Housing survey in February found 46 out of 103 chief executives felt their organisation would be unlikely to sign up.”

Instead, the nine associations’ alternative framework is likely to involve a number of ‘core principles’ for all participating landlords to sign up to, but also options to choose to adopt different elements according to need. This could include landlords of different sizes or operating in different parts of the country signing up to different guidelines.

Mr Peacock said the landlords are choosing to develop a code – as opposed to sticking with the status quo- to ensure the regulator does not force them to sign up to something they don’t want.

The landlords will hold their first meeting to discuss the code, which they hope will be supported more widely in the sector, in May and hope to have it in place by the autumn.

ALTERNATIVE MERGER CODE: THE LANDLORDS INVOLVED

Bolton At Home
Community Gateway Association
Freebridge Community Housing
Havebury Housing
Progress Housing Group
Red Kite Community Housing
Soha Housing
South Yorkshire Housing Association
Wythenshawe Community Housing Group

The phasing out of lifetime tenancies will not negatively impact protected demographic groups overall, the government has said.

According to Inside Housing:

“The government is proposing phasing out lifetime tenancies for new social tenants and instead requiring landlords to offer fixed-term tenancies. The government announced last week that social landlords would be able to offer lifetime tenancies for “up to 10 years”, rather than five years as originally proposed.

In its equalities impact assessment published yesterday, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) assessed the potential impact of the policy on several demographic groups, including older people, younger people, families, people with disabilities, ethnic minorities and women.

It said: “While it is possible that there may be some negative impacts on some members of protected groups, for instance increasing concerns about future security of tenure where their housing need is marginal, this is outweighed by the wider benefits to protected groups as a whole.

“All the protected groups should benefit from better use of the social rented stock and from the regular assessment of tenants’ circumstances that should ensure a better fit between the household and their social home.” Inside Housing has asked DCLG for more information about the methodology used for the impact assessment.

The government is expected to publish guidance on the use of 10-year tenancies later in the year. However, the equalities impact assessment states: “Five years will be the normal maximum (for households without children of school age), with 10 years applicable for those with longer-term needs, such as older people, the disabled and their carers.”

The assessment said older people are “much more likely” to under-occupy their social rented home. It said 58% lifetime tenancies for under-occupying households had a tenant aged 60 or over compared to 36% of social rented houses overall. It said older people will benefit from the policy because it will make it “easier for social landlords to support older tenants’ move to more manageable-sized accommodation, freeing up larger homes for families”.

Younger people are “overrepresented” in social housing compared to other age groups, according to the assessment. It said 21% of lettings were made to people aged 18 to 24 in 2013/14.

The assessment concluded: “There is a potential for them to benefit from the increased freedom for landlords to offer shorter-term tenancies (i.e. between two and five years), where for example landlords use them to support young people into work.”

The government conceded there may be a negative impact on individuals who are forced to leave a tenancy, but “the policy will not have a substantial impact on discrimination overall”.

“The policy should have benefits for the wider community by ensuring a fair distribution of a limited, subsidised resource,” it added.”

This is an excellent expert from the Guardian by Sir Bob on the debate in the House of Lords:

“The government’s housing and planning bill, which left the House of Lords on 27 April, has gone through several days of discussion and seen 18 government defeats.

This is an unequal contest. The Lords can test, challenge and amend but in the end the government will prevail. This is particularly the case for proposals that were included in the Conservative party manifesto. Due to the introduction of English votes for English laws, for which this bill was the first test case, the government has a majority of more than 50 in the Commons.
Nevertheless some important improvements have been made. Fixed-term council tenancies can now be up to 10 years rather than five, and longer if children are involved. Where higher value council houses are forced to be sold to fund housing association right-to-buy discounts, there will now be a commitment in the bill that these should be replaced one-for-one (and two-for-one in London). The starter homes offer has been modified to make it less of a quick windfall gain for those who are able to take advantage of it. Rent increases for those caught by the pay-to-stay plan – which would see higher earning council tenants charged higher rents – will be less steep.

But the fundamental concerns about the fairness of the bill still remain. One group of people, those with the wherewithal to buy, are being helped at the expense of those on lower incomes who are in greater need. Local authorities will now be required to include 20% of starter homes in all future planning applications, which will largely squeeze affordable rented housing out of planning agreements. The forced sale of higher value council houses, unless they can be replaced like-for-like, will reduce the stock of much needed family housing in areas of greatest demand. The homelessness charity Shelter has calculated that 23,500 local authority homes will need to be sold a year to fund right to buy, a third of all council houses that become vacant. We need to help those who want to buy, but this should not be instead of those whose only real option is social rent.

Publicly provided, social rented housing is now seen as toxic. This is something that I deeply regret
Perhaps the most worrying part of the bill is what it tells us about the government’s underlying view on the future of social housing. There has been much debate over the years about how social housing has changed from being a general source of housing for ordinary people on lower incomes, to being increasingly available only to those in most desperate need. Providing housing for a third of the population in the 1980s, it now houses less than half of that. With the changes in this bill, the numbers will fall further still and social housing will not just be residual, but temporary and contingent. Social housing tenants who progress in life will be expected to pay more rent and ultimately make way for others in greater need. Social houses will no longer be homes to settle down and plan a future in, but a temporary welfare benefit.

Previous Conservative governments boasted about the number of social rented houses they had built. Many Conservative controlled councils still feel the same way. Over the course of this bill though, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that for the leading figures in this government, publicly provided, social rented housing is now seen as toxic. This is something that I deeply regret.

In time, I believe the government will come to regret this also. It is simply not possible to deliver the new housing the country needs without building more houses of all types and tenures, including social housing.

The debate in the Lords is soon coming to an end but the debate in the country should not. Our housing crisis desperately needs a fair, locally led and practical response. Organisations such as Shelter, the Chartered Institute of Housing, and the Local Government Association, who have done such a great job in supporting us during the passage of the bill, will have their work cut out for some time to come.”

Join the Guardian Housing Network to read more pieces like this

The English social housing regulator is set to relax its registration rules for newly merged housing associations as part of the government’s deregulation drive.

The Homes and Communities Agency will consult on removing a requirement on merged social landlords to go through a rigorous registration process with the regulator.

Measures already announced in the Housing and Planning Bill,  will remove the requirement for associations to ask for HCA consent before forming mergers.

The HCA will now go one step further and radically simplify the process of registering merged bodies with the regulator. Inside Housing understands that the HCA wants to allow merged associations to receive near to automatic approval for registration.

Under current rules, landlords that transfer engagements or amalgamate must undergo a demanding process in order to register with the regulator, including governance and viability checks.

The regulator is concerned that associations would still face additional hurdles from the HCA to registration despite attempts from the government to deregulate the sector.

The National Housing Federation (NHF) last year published its first merger code, a document that was widely seen as a move to encourage thinking about mergers.

TYPES OF HOUSING ASSOCIATION MERGERS AND PARTNERSHIPS

Transfer of engagement A transfer of one housing association’s business into another, with all assets and liabilities automatically bestowed to the receiving business.

Amalgamation One or more associations merge together to form a combined body into which assets and liabilities are transferred.

Group structures A new parent entity is formed, with subsidiary organisations able to reain their individual identity, with no automatic transfers of assets or staff.

Strategic alliance Where organisations form a close working relationship and agree to work together but remain constitutionally separate

Here are some very useful breifings from our friends at the NHF on the policy process and the principles of the voluntary right to buy process.

They are an easy read and very comprehensive and will keep you up to date with current thinking

12. Nat Fed VRTB Development Process Briefing.pdf April 2016

11. Nat Fed Hsg VRTB Agreement Briefing.pdf April 2016

Buy-to-let landlords should face new limits on the amount they can borrow, the Bank of England has proposed.
It suggested that lenders should be much stricter when deciding whether or not to grant landlords a mortgage.
Instead of just taking their rental income into account, the Bank wants lenders to look at their wider financial situation as well.
If adopted, the new rules could reduce lending to landlords by up to 20% over the next three years.

According to the BBC:
“”The Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) – an arm of the Bank – has recommended that banks and building societies take account of:all the costs a landlord might have to pay when renting out a property, any tax liability associated with the property, a landlord’s personal tax liabilities, “essential expenditure” and living costs, a landlord’s additional income – where this is being used to support the borrowing. This income should be “verified”.
Future growth
The PRA said the new standards would “curtail inappropriate lending, and the potential for excessive credit losses.”
The Bank’s Governor, Mark Carney, warned in December that mass-selling by landlords could destabilise the economy.
The PRA has also suggested that lenders should apply a stricter interest rate “stress test”, to measure affordability in the event of a rise in interest rates.
It said lenders should look at potential rate rises over a five year period from the start of a mortgage.
They should also consider whether a landlord could afford repayments in the event of a 2% rise in interest rates.
The PRA said that 75% of lenders already meet these stricter criteria. However it is thought that some of the major lenders do not.
‘Interference’
Landlords already face a series of tax changes, which it is thought will limit the growth in the buy-to-let market.
These include a 3% stamp duty surcharge from next month. From 2017, landlords will only be able to claim tax relief on their mortgage payments at the basic rate of 20%.
From 2019 they will also have to pay any Capital Gains tax due within 30 days, rather than simply by the end of the tax year.
As a result some experts accused the Bank of acting too late to control the buy-to-let market.
“This is a classic case of slamming the stable door after the horse has bolted,” said Jeremy Leaf, a former chairman of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.
“The changes the Chancellor has made to mortgage interest tax relief and higher stamp duty for landlords will have enough of an impact on buy-to-let without the need for further interference from the Bank of England.”
Before the PRA announcement lenders had expected the buy-to-let market to expand by 20% a year over the next few years, in spite of the tax changes.
If the measures are adopted, the PRA believes such growth will slow to 17% a year.
The PRA consultation will last until 29 June 2016.”

Devolving responsibility and funding for the management of low-level offenders could empower local services and agencies to work more effectively to prevent crime and develop alternatives to prison that do more to rehabilitate offenders. This briefing describes how this can be achieved by IPPR.

prisons-and-prevention_Jan2016

This is what IPPR say:
“England and Wales’s prison system could do better at reducing crime and rehabilitating offenders: it is currently a hugely expensive and highly inefficient arm of the public sector. As the number of prisoners continues to rise, and as the Ministry of Justice budget is faces further cuts, this is clearly unsustainable.

This paper argues that reform is needed to address the inherent flaw in our criminal justice system: that the bodies that could take action to reduce offending have neither the financial power nor the incentive to do so. This is because many of the services and agencies that could act to reduce offending are organised and controlled at the local level, whereas the budget for prison places is held by central government.

The challenge, therefore, is to ‘unfreeze’ the resources that are locked up in the prison system, and ensure that local services and agencies are enabled and incentivised to use those resources to both prevent crime and develop alternatives to custody. At the moment, incentives work in precisely the wrong direction: if a local authority invests in high-quality services that keep people out of prison, the financial benefits accrue to the Ministry of Justice (as it spends less on prisons as a result) rather than the local authority, which ends up meeting the costs of ever more people using their community services

The recent drive to devolve power and resources to groups of local authorities and city mayors could hold the answer to this problem. The government has already successfully experimented with devolving elements of the youth justice system to local authorities, as well as granting greater powers over transport, skills and health services to some of England’s major cities and counties. In this report We propose that this approach be extended to the management of low-level adult offenders, who make up the bulk of ‘churn’ within the prison system. This would involve giving city mayors or combined authorities a budget to cover the costs of these offenders, but charging them for each night that an offender from their area is held in prison. This would give local authorities resources to invest in preventative services and alternatives to custody, and give them a strong financial incentive to ensure that these investments deliver results, while also ensuring that money and responsibility for the reduction of reoffending is located where it can best be exercised.

This report presents case studies of a number of youth justice programmes in the US and England that have proven effective at reducing pressure on prisons and reoffending, drawing from them eight principles that should underpin the reform and devolution of the adult offenders budget. Bearing these principles in mind, it sets out detailed recommendations for the timings and mechanisms by which the government should pursue these reforms – which bodies should be allowed to bid for control of the custody budget, how targets should be set and oversight and accountability ensured, how funding and savings should be managed and how, in time, funding for probation services for low-level offenders should also be devolved.”

Britain faces the risk of major economic losses as a consequence of climate change. This report considers why markets have not yet adequately confronted this problem, and sets out practical steps to better defend the UK against the threats to our prosperity that climate risks pose.
The second edition of this report is updated in light of the Paris Agreement, and includes a new foreword from Michael Jacobs, visiting fellow and associate director for energy, transport and climate at IPPR.

Here is the report:

This is what IPPR say known-unknowns_2nd-ed_March2016

There is a growing body of evidence that the UK faces significant risks to its security from climate change. This is true whether or not the world achieves the goal it established at the Copenhagen summit in 2009 of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 2ºC. Yet markets and financial decision-makers continue to pursue business as usual. We learned from the financial crisis the importance of seeking out and exposing hidden economic risks to enable them to be better managed to protect individual and collective capital. It is time for us to follow this lesson again.

It appears likely that we face a future of dangerous global temperature increases, of more than 2ºC, and therefore of increased climate-related risks. Evidence suggests that the levels of warming we could see in these scenarios would pose a dangerous threat to human health, our food and water security, and even to our national security.

This report focusses specifically on the future threat posed to British prosperity from climate risks, as well as the significant economic impacts that have already been felt.

Our research identifies three broad reasons why markets are currently failing to account for climate risks.

Climate risks are seen as too distant to be relevant to financial decisionmakers, who tend to focus on a short-term timeframe in which climate shocks are seen as unlikely to have a significant, financially material impact.
Climate risks are very uncertain – they are ‘known unknowns’. We may know some of the risks associated with different levels of increased temperatures, but it is still unclear what the actual temperature trajectory will be, and how its effects will be distributed across sectors and geographies
Climate change is widely acknowledged to be an ‘ethical’ concern and a matter for public policymakers, but climate policies are not taken seriously by many businesses and investment managers.
Responding to each of these issues in turn, we present policy recommendations that can deliver on the following objectives.

Build understanding of where the UK economy is vulnerable to climate risks.
Ensure financial decision-makers have the information they need in order to account for climate risks.
Ensure asset managers do not ignore these risks in their decision-making.
To reduce the overall level of the risk that most businesses face as a consequence of climate change

The UK’s foundation industries – producers of materials such as steel and basic chemicals used by other manufacturers – have suffered in the years since the crisis. This IPPR report asks why, and considers how, with the right policies, these industries could be key to rebalancing our economy and boosting our exports.

strong-foundation-industries_March2016

IPPR say:
“The foundation industries – manufacturers of core materials that supply other manufacturing and construction firms – have had a tough post-crisis period. Despite pockets of stronger than average investment, productivity and pay compared to the economy as a whole, these industries have experienced a deeper contraction, and been in recessionary territory for longer, than both the rest of manufacturing and the economy as a whole.

Although partly the result of increased competition from emerging markets, globalisation isn’t the whole story: the foundation industries in the UK are smaller, and have contracted faster, than has been the case in other developed countries facing the same challenges. This reflects a broader weakness of the UK’s economy: our manufacturing diversity has been lost over the last 40 years, and we remain an anomaly among advanced economies in having so few industries with comparative advantage. This is a key reason for our large and longstanding trade deficit.

Our analysis suggests that EU competitors support their industries in ways that the UK does not, which warrants investigation. Evidence on public and private research and development (R&D), productivity and investment performance shows that the UK performs relatively poorly, and that there is a role for government and industry in terms of helping firms to improve. With transitional support, the UK’s foundation industry firms have the potential to supply advanced manufacturing firms, such as those in aerospace, automobiles and pharmaceuticals, to a much greater extent than they do currently. Building on our areas of existing comparative advantage would be a low-risk way to diversify our production capacity; this is, therefore, where the government should focus its efforts.

The government’s response should have two phases. First, it should ease the pressure on those industries in acute distress by ensuring that UK firms are not unfairly disadvantaged by tax, energy costs or subsidised imports. Second, it should look to strengthen the institutional support available to the foundation industries, in line with other EU countries, in order to help them adjust their production to better integrate into domestic supply chains. This could include providing firms with more patient forms of finance, improved collaboration and innovation systems, and more life-cycle-costing forms of public procurement for the goods the foundation industries produce.”