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Giant landlord announces merger talks with London-based association
Places for People has announced it has entered merger discussions with a London-based landlord.
Origin Housing and Places for People have begun talks over a potential tie-up that will see Origin become a subsidiary of the larger association.
Place for People, a 230,000-home landlord, whose operations include social housing, retirement schemes and leisure facilities, recorded a post-tax surplus of £91.3m in the year to the end of March 2023, compared with £70.8m the year before.
Origin, which owns and manages more than 7,000 homes across London and Hertfordshire, was placed on the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) gradings under review list earlier this week.
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News of the RSH’s investigation followed an earlier report by Inside Housing which revealed that Origin is pulling out of its operations in Essex and putting its properties up for sale.
Commenting on the merger discussions, Carol Carter, chief executive of Origin, said: “After several months of fruitful discussions, we have a set of outline proposals we believe will be hugely beneficial to Origin’s residents, our local communities, our staff and all other stakeholders.
“We’ll be communicating the details and consulting with our residents over the coming weeks to get their views on the proposed partnership.”
Greg Reed, group chief executive officer of Places for People, said: “We believe there’s a strong synergy between our organisations – we are a really good fit both geographically and culturally – and Places for People would bring resource, scale and investment that would be so positive for Origin’s customers and communities.
“We hope that conversations reach a successful conclusion over the next few months, and [we] will update our stakeholders at that point.”
The housing associations said there will be “more information for residents to follow shortly”.
