Housing Executive on track for restructure by 2025, chief executive says
The Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE) is on track to carry out a restructure by 2025, its chief executive has said.
Speaking to Inside Housing, Grainia Long said the restructure will allow the Housing Executive to be freed up to borrow against its rental income so that it can invest more in its homes, particularly for decarbonisation.
A restructure of the NIHE has been on the cards for years.
In 2018, it emerged that the NIHE was facing an annual shortfall of around £140m and that £7bn of investment was needed over the next 30 years.
At the time, the NIHE warned that 43,000 homes could fall into disrepair if additional funding was not secured.
A major part of the problem is that its current classification means it is unable to borrow without affecting the public balance sheet.
Plans for a restructure were officially announced by ministers in November 2020. It would see the Housing Executive’s landlord and regional functions separated into two.
READ MORE
However, the changes have yet to materialise and Northern Ireland currently does not have a functioning government.
The Democratic Unionist Party is refusing to restore power-sharing until the Northern Ireland Protocol is scrapped.
The news of the restructure comes as the NIHE released its action plan for reducing its carbon footprint over the next five years, ahead of the long-term goal of net zero by 2050.
Ms Long said she was “genuinely feeling very optimistic” about achieving net zero.
She added: “At Northern Ireland level, there is increasingly an acceptance that decarbonisation means investment rather than cost.
“And I’ll be making the point as much as I can with colleagues in the Department for Communities, Department for the Economy, and the Department of Finance that decarbonisation of buildings is a really, really strong economic proposition.”
But Ms Long said the funding challenges are “immense”.
The Housing Executive produced a Cost of Carbon report in 2021, which estimated that it would cost £9.2bn to get the 586,000 homes in Northern Ireland that need upgrades to an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) Band B.
The calculation was made before inflation surged.
Ms Long said: “[The intention of the restructure] is that the Housing Executive will be freed up to borrow, so we’ll be able to borrow against our rental income.
“We will use that borrowing to fund a long-term investment plan in our stock.
“Part of that investment will have to include decarbonisation, which has a very large price tag associated with it.”
The Housing Executive has not looked at the cost on a house-by-house basis yet.
“But we do fully understand that we are looking at hundreds of millions, if not more,” stated Ms Long.
She said the solution for the Housing Executive is the restructure that communities minister Deirdre Hargey announced. “And that we hope will be in place by 2025,” Ms Long added.
Sign up for our Northern Ireland bulletin
Already have an account? Click here to manage your newsletters
