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Delayed Spending Review will ‘almost inevitably’ impact housing supply, NHF warns
Delaying the multi-year Spending Review will “almost inevitably” impact the number of affordable homes housing associations build, the National Housing Federation (NHF) has warned.
Some associations are already reporting that they are holding back on buying land because they won’t be able to finish building on it by the end of the current Affordable Homes Programme, which finishes in March 2021, the trade body said.
Earlier this month the government announced it would be delaying a planned multi-year Spending Review in favour of a fast-tracked one-year Spending Round to help departments prepare for Brexit.
Will Jeffwitz, policy leader at the NHF, said: “By summer next year, we will be just nine months from the end of the current Affordable Homes Programme. If there’s still no certainty over what’s happening next, that would almost inevitably have an impact on supply because of the lead-in times for new development.”
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The fast-tracked Spending Round, due to take place in September, will provide new resource budgets which cover the day-to-day spending of departments.
Capital budgets, which cover longer-term investment projects including the Affordable Homes Programme, will now not be revised until next year.
The programme is the five-year government funding agreement launched in March 2016 to provide £4.7bn in grant to build shared ownership and other affordable homes. In November 2016, then-chancellor Philip Hammond announced an extra £1.4bn for the programme to build an additional 40,000 affordable homes.
Carol Matthews, chief executive at Riverside, said that if there is a “cliff edge” on funding certainty, housing associations will not commit to schemes and numbers could drop.
The NHF is now calling on the government to use the upcoming one-year Spending Review to roll over the Affordable Homes Programme for an additional year to 2022.
The Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government declined to comment.
