The Week in Housing: Rayner updates on rent convergence and housing targets, plus Homes England’s view on shared ownership inquiry

A new report suggested the government could get closer to meeting its target by scrapping hope value for landowners, which has been blamed for artificially inflating land prices. It would also slash the cost of building 90,000 social homes a year by £4.5bn.

At the same time, housing secretary Angela Rayner said she is pushing cabinet colleagues for rent convergence as she urged housing associations to restart their development programmes.

A consultation on Right to Buy was launched, and there will be a separate one on licensing for supported accommodation providers is expected in the new year.

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook promised that the government will consult in 2025 on banning new leasehold flats and will publish a white paper on reforms to commonhold in the next few months.

His update to parliament came just days after the UK’s largest manager of leasehold properties was called to meet with 34 MPs over “rip-off” service charges.

There were also a number of policy interventions in Wales after the housing minister said she will create a social rent policy that reflects the key role played by social landlords in the nation, ahead of a sector-wide consultation to be carried out next summer.

A Senedd inquiry called for a national development corporation to speed up housebuilding and for the Welsh development bank to become a direct funder of social housing to help meet housing targets.

Charity Housing Justice Cymru said the current housing crisis will derail the Welsh government’s goal of becoming a “nation of sanctuary”.

Plus, the Building Safety Bill in Wales will be introduced before the government’s summer recess in 2025, and a revised British fire safety standard is set to be published next week.

On governance issues, the Housing Ombudsman published a report it described as containing “some of the most demanding and distressing cases we have seen”. The watchdog named 10 landlords in its latest learning report on anti-social behaviour, including one incident where a resident reported being threatened with a gun.

Safety and maintenance issues were found after a review by the ombudsman looked at how a housing association’s green ‘living roof’ came apart as a result of storm damage.

One London council referred itself to the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) after identifying compliance gaps with the consumer standards.

The latest RSH quarterly survey found that registered providers plan to spend £15.6bn on acquiring and developing homes over the next year, a 3% drop from the previous quarter’s forecast.

At a conference on Wednesday, sector professionals discussed how the English regulator’s “brutal” regulatory process is deterring house builders from setting up their own for-profit registered providers.

There were several big appointments from across the sector this week.

For-profit housing provider Legal & General Affordable Homes recruited its new managing director of stock acquisitions from Hyde.

The National Housing Federation welcomed three new senior leaders to its board.

Sovereign Network Group appointed a new chief investment and development officer.

One of Scotland’s largest registered social landlords has made two new senior appointments.

In Northern Ireland, the housing executive revealed plans to more than triple its investment in homes in Ards and North Down this year.

Trading updates this week revealed that Great Places Housing Group expects to miss its full-year operating margin “golden rule”, after lower-than-expected market sales and booking an extra £2m in costs for maintenance and fire risk work.

Yorkshire Housing published an uptick in surplus and turnover, and it has reduced the number of empty homes in its stock to pre-pandemic levels.

Peabody reported a stable operating surplus for the first six months of the financial year, in spite of a significant drop in completions.

Inside Housing published three big interviews this week. Bruce Moore, chief executive of Housing 21, spoke about why there is an urgent need for the new government to draw up a long-term strategy for housing the UK’s ageing population.

In addition, after more than three decades in housing, the ambitious finance director who drove some of the sector’s biggest mergers is retiring. Waqar Ahmed spoke candidly about his time in the sector.

Finally, Inside Housing spoke to Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation about the next stages of its #PlanForHousing campaign and why the next few months are critical to the future of housing in England.

We took a deep dive into last month’s Budget and looked at how recent changes to debt rules could affect the housing sector.

We also looked at what can be done to ease the crisis of families needing to move into larger homes.

Have a great weekend.

Stephen Delahunty, news editor, Inside Housing

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