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Housing must become key government aim if development plans are to be achieved, says NIFHA boss
Housing must become a key aim for the Northern Irish government if it is to deliver on its ambitious development plans, the head of the nation’s housing association body has said.
Ben Collins, chief executive of the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA), said that to enable the delivery of its draft housing supply strategy, housing must become a standalone priority in its Programme for Government (PfG).
The PfG aims to build more than 100,000 new homes over the next 15 years, with one in three of these being affordable homes.
The Northern Ireland Executive is developing an outcome-based PfG, which currently includes nine strategic outcomes such as “having a caring society” and “children having a good start in life”.
However, it emerged last year that this plan failed to include a specific outcome on housing as one of the nine.
This was despite previous commitments to develop a PfG with a new outcome and indicators which would specifically focus on households being able to access “good-quality, affordable and sustainable” homes.
The pledge was made in the ‘New Decade, New Approach’ deal agreed by political parties in Northern Ireland as they formed a new government in January 2020 following three years of deadlock.
But as it stands, while housing is mentioned in the draft PfG, which was published in January 2021, it is not one of the nine strategic outcomes that will drive the government’s policies.
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In December, the government launched a consultation on its draft housing supply strategy, which includes plans to deliver more than 100,000 new homes over the next 15 years.
Mr Collins said the strategy is “honourable” and “covers all the right things”.
However, on the feasibility of achieving the targets, he said: “Ultimately it comes down to three things: ‘do you have the land, do you have the infrastructure, and do you have the money?’”
He added: “One of the reasons why we want to have a standalone housing outcome in the next PfG is because, while housing sits with the Department for Communities [DfC], to deliver housing effectively it must be a cross-departmental thing.
“A standalone housing outcome would hopefully bind different government departments together to have a more joined-up approach.
“At a high level, a housing supply strategy is a good thing and we want to have a mixed-tenure approach across social, affordable and private.
“However, to deliver that effectively and in a very practical sense, you need to have this standalone outcome.”
A standalone housing outcome is one of NIFHA’s eight asks ahead of the Northern Ireland Assembly election on 5 May.
The executive has been operating without a leader since the Democratic Unionist Party’s Paul Givan resigned from the role in February.
It is hoped an executive will be formed in the elections.
NIFHA has called on political parties to cut the housing waiting list, reverse the cut of the £20 Universal Credit uplift, provide more funding to build affordable housing, and to provide a specific social housing budget for decarbonisation.
It is also calling on government to set a multiyear budget, not just for the Social Housing Development Programme but also for infrastructure.
Mr Collins said: “If we have that certainty over a longer period of time, that will make the social housing and mixed-tenure approach more appealing to a wider range of contractors.”
A DfC spokesperson said: “Communities minister Deirdre Hargey is on record as saying housing should be a standalone outcome in the Programme for Government.”
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