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Strategic Partnerships revealed: how much extra cash have partners received under Homes England’s scheme?
Last month, Homes England published its latest figures on the performance of its flagship Strategic Partnership Programme. But has it delivered good results? Stephen Delahunty crunches the numbers to see which social landlords have been the success stories of the scheme
“This is a fantastic opportunity for the sector to up its game and get more affordable homes built more quickly,” said then-Homes England chief executive Nick Walkley when unveiling the Strategic Partnership Programme.
Strategic partnerships promised to shake up the way social housing development was funded and move from piecemeal to programme-based handouts.
Eight housing associations were picked in the first wave of the Strategic Partnership Programme. They secured £653m on the promise that they would start 14,280 homes by March 2022. This was followed by two more waves, which included 15 partnerships that agreed to funding worth £1.15bn in total.
The long-term approach was a shift away from the usual continuous market engagement (CME) form of funding in place, which saw providers approach the government on a project-by-project basis.
As CME is often seen as cumbersome and inefficient, housing associations have for years been calling for a longer-term funding plan for development to replace it. Strategic partnerships granted this wish, with landlords promising this would drive efficiencies and make difficult sites more viable to develop on. But have these promises been met?
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Last month the government published its most recent figures for the Strategic Partnership Programme, including breakdowns by lead partner, tenure and region, covering the period up to the end of March 2021.
With the new figures published, Inside Housing has dug into each association’s performance to find out which landlord will hit its targets, which organisation added to its development numbers and which association struggled to fulfil its initial pledge.
Positive numbers
The headline figures make it seem as though the programme has worked. As of March 2021, a total of 23 strategic partners agreed to deliver 42,675 homes after they received more than £1.92bn in funding. This was up from the £1.7bn initially pledged, with the number of homes 2,675 higher than the 40,000 initially pledged.
“This funding enabled us to increase our supply of affordable homes… and we exceeded our targets in our affordable homes delivery plan”
For the first time, we can see the breakdown of the tenures of these homes: 16,572 homes were pledged for affordable rent and 16,080 for affordable homeownership. However, social rent is still the lowest tenure, with just 10,023 of these homes agreed to.
Stonewater, in partnership with The Guinness Partnership, was the biggest recipient of grant funding with £224m and is set to deliver the most homes across all tenures: 4,500. Of these, 1,173 have been pledged for affordable rent, 1,400 for social rent and 1,927 for shared ownership.
This was followed by Vivid with 2,834 homes, and LiveWest and Sovereign with 2,775.
Vivid is aiming to deliver by far the most homes for social rent at 1,670, but it did not start any for affordable rent. The 32,000-home landlord explains that it had started homes for affordable rent over this period but outside of its strategic partnership with Homes England.
Places for People aims to deliver the most affordable rent homes (1,550) and Orbit plans to build the second most properties for affordable homeownership (1,681).
At the other end of the scale, EMH Group was among the partners that were allocated the smallest amount of funding. It originally promised to deliver 748 homes. The East Midlands-based association says a strong start in the first wave of the programme allowed it to obtain an additional £12m in funding for an extra 200 homes.
Chris Jones, executive director of development at EMH Group, explains that the landlord’s commitment to delivering more social rent homes in key local authority areas was a contributing factor to the funding uplift.
Funding allocations and homes pledged in the Strategic Partnership Programme
| Strategic partners | Initial funding allocation | Total funding allocation as of March 2021 | Difference | Initial homes allocation | Total homes pledged as of March 2021 | Difference |
| Accord (as lead on Matrix Partnership) | £77,035,945.00 | £77,035,945.00 | £0.00 | 2,257 | 2,257 | 0 |
| Bromford | £74,344,000.00 | £66,400,000.00 | £7,944,000.00 | 1,400 | 1,508 | 108 |
| Curo and Swan | £51,100,000.00 | £51,100,000.00 | £0.00 | 1,067 | 1,067 | 0 |
| EMH Group | £43,382,000.00 | £30,500,000.00 | £12,882,000.00 | 748 | 948 | 200 |
| Great Places | £52,629,088.00 | £29,200,000.00 | £23,429,088.00 | 750 | 1,339 | 589 |
| Home Group | £95,013,141.00 | £85,000,000.00 | £10,013,141.00 | 2,300 | 2,300 | 0 |
| Hyde Housing Association | £95,424,000.00 | £95,400,000.00 | £0.00 | 1,623 | 1,623 | 0 |
| LiveWest and Soveriegn | £136,000,000.00 | £112,000,000.00 | £24,000,000.00 | 2,275 | 2,775 | 500 |
| L&Q | £85,256,385.00 | £85,256,385.00 | £0.00 | 1,725 | 1,725 | 0 |
| Longhurst and Nottingham Community Housing Association | £77,600,000.00 | £71,700,000.00 | £5,900,000.00 | 1,685 | 1,835 | 150 |
| Optivo | £44,940,000.00 | £44,940,000.00 | £0.00 | 1,000 | 1,000 | 0 |
| Orbit Group | £128,800,000.00 | £128,800,000.00 | £0.00 | 2,762 | 2,762 | 0 |
| Places for People | £74,025,921.00 | £74,025,921.00 | £0.00 | 2,603 | 2,603 | 0 |
| Platform Housing Group | £74,155,815.00 | £71,800,000.00 | £2,355,815.00 | 1,800 | 1,878 | 78 |
| Southern Housing Group | £55,062,000.00 | £55,100,000.00 | £0.00 | 1,005 | 1,005 | 0 |
| Stonewater and Guinness | £224,000,000.00 | £224,000,000.00 | £0.00 | 4,500 | 4,500 | 0 |
| Thirteen Housing Group | £45,520,000.00 | £40,000,000.00 | £5,520,000.00 | 1,000 | 1,138 | 138 |
| Together Housing Association | £61,254,000.00 | £53,000,000.00 | £8,254,000.00 | 1,152 | 1,331 | 179 |
| Torus and Liverpool Mutual Homes | £72,176,000.00 | £66,400,000.00 | £5,776,000.00 | 1,757 | 1,907 | 150 |
| Vivid Housing | £186,243,200.00 | £88,200,000.00 | £98,043,200.00 | 1,408 | 2,834 | 1,426 |
| Walsall Housing Group | £38,732,816.00 | £38,732,816.00 | £0.00 | 1,000 | 1,000 | 0 |
| Yorkshire Housing | £44,232,400.00 | £61,800,000.00 | -£17,567,600.00 | 1,300 | 1,025 | -275 |
| Your Housing | £87,516,332.00 | £87,516,332.00 | £0.00 | 2,315 | 2,315 | 0 |
| Total | £1,925,236,863.00 | £1,737,907,399.00 | £186,549,644.00 | 39,432 | 42,675 | 3,243 |
Source: Homes England
Changing variables
While EMH Group might have been one of the smaller initial partnerships, pledging to build 948 homes under the programme – followed by Optivo (1,000) and WHG (1,000) – it received the fourth-highest increase in funds.
EMH Group was not the only strategic partner to see its funding allocation change over time. The data shows how allocations have fluctuated depending on a landlord’s ability to hit delivery targets.
Overall, almost £200m in additional funding was awarded. Eleven landlords were allocated increased grant money and only one received less. The rest either received the same amount or were not involved in earlier funding rounds.
Vivid received an initial grant allocation of £88.2m to build 1,408 homes across all tenures. However, after it exceeded the targets set out in its delivery plan, Homes England increased Vivid’s funding by a staggering £98m to a total of £186m.
This made the housing association the largest recipient of additional funding and allowed it to more than double its delivery target to 2,834 homes.
Mike Shepherd, group development and new business director at Vivid, said: “This funding enabled us to increase our supply of affordable homes comprised of social rent and shared ownership, and we exceeded our target dates in our affordable homes delivery plan.”
Top five increases in Strategic Partnership funding
- Vivid: £98m
- LiveWest and Sovereign: £24m
- Great Places Housing Group: £23.4m
- EMH Group: £12.9m
- Home Group: £10m
Vivid has also secured a further £105.6m in the Affordable Homes Programme 2021-26, which takes the housing association’s total combined allocation over both schemes to more than £291m.
The tie-up between LiveWest and Sovereign saw the next biggest funding boost across the first wave of the Strategic Partnership Programme, securing an additional £24m for an extra 500 homes.
Great Places Housing Group originally received £29.2m for 750 homes before negotiating two additional increases – first to £49.7m, then to £52m – to deliver a new total of 1,339 homes.
The 24,000-home landlord says this new target is “now well advanced in terms of delivery”.
“Many of the challenges that have been faced during the delivery of the programme have been the result of the COVID pandemic”
Home Group has 55,000 properties across the UK. The landlord received £10m in extra funding, but did not increase the number of homes it promised to deliver. Instead, the housing association has agreed a variation in its grant programme.
Will Gardner, director of development at Home Group, explains: “Home Group through its dialogue with Homes England negotiated a change to the tenure of the homes it would deliver in its programme, removing some homes to be delivered outside of the programme without the requirement for grant support and introducing others to maintain the same level of overall delivery.”
Under the programme, Home Group hopes to deliver the third-highest number of homes at affordable rent (1,271) in addition to 863 at affordable homeownership and 166 at social rent.
42,000
Number of homes the partners agreed to deliver
23
Housing associations picked to be strategic partners
11
Strategic partners that were given increased grant
16,000
Homes pledged for affordable homeownership
10,000
Properties pledged for social rent
Torus is one of the biggest housing associations in the North West, with around 40,000 homes. The landlord says it “wanted to unlock more land in the region to build the homes people need, where they need them”.
Chris Bowen, managing director at Torus Developments, adds: “During the course of delivering our new build programme, as part of wave two of the [programme], we bid for an extra £6m, which means we will build an extra 150 homes, in addition to the 1,757 programmed for completion in the initial bid.”
“Following our assessment, we reached an agreement with Homes England to reduce our bid to deliver 1,025 homes within the same period, and we are on track to deliver this allocation”
Yorkshire Housing was the only association whose delivery aims were revised down. It saw its funding reduced by £17m and its delivery promise brought down by 275 homes. However, it explains this was not because it failed to hit its targets, but due to renegotiated funding and home allocations following the pandemic.
A Yorkshire Housing spokesperson says: “In March 2020 we made the decision to pause bidding on new land for a period of six months while we assessed the impact of the pandemic on the housing and construction markets. Following our assessment, we reached an agreement with Homes England to reduce our bid to deliver 1,025 homes within the same period, and we are on track to deliver this allocation.”
Update: at 16.15pm, 04.03.22
This story was updated to remove a comment that was wrongly attributed to the Blue Skies Consortium, led by Longhurst Group and Nottingham Community Housing Association.
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