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Orr: social housing funding ‘in crisis’
Social housing funding is “in crisis” and the government must put more money into genuinely affordable homes, David Orr will say at today’s National Housing Federation (NHF) conference.
In his keynote speech this morning on fixing the broken housing market, the NHF chief executive will demand that a seven-year shift away from funding social rented housing is reversed.
Other senior figures in the social housing sector have backed the call, which marks a significant change of tone for the NHF. The organisation has adopted a more conciliatory approach to the government in the past couple of years.
The warning will come as the NHF publishes a report showing that in 2015, the UK spent less than half the amount it did in 2009, down from £11.4bn to £5.3bn.
Funding from government for social rented homes was cut off in 2010.
During the financial year 2010/11, work was started on nearly 36,000 social rented homes, but this fell to just 3,000 in the next year.
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David Orr told Inside Housing: “We’ve tried very hard to work constructively with government and there have been successes in that. You’ll recall that in 2015, the then-chancellor announced a Budget where there was no money for rented housing at all. The engagement we had with government meant that we got some significant change to that.
“But the offer that we now have for people who are on very low incomes is just not acceptable. We don’t have a good housing offer for people who are not already in social rent. We don’t have a good housing offer for people who are on very low incomes.”
Sinéad Butters, chair of sector body Placeshapers, agreed that social housing funding is in crisis.
She told Inside Housing: “I’m sure you won’t find many people who disagree with that. I’m pleased that the [NHF] is using this opportunity to make a stand about it. Social housing programmes have been decimated by grant reductions and I think if we want to build more homes we need to build more homes of all tenures.”
Paul Hackett, chair of the G15 group of London’s largest housing associations, echoed these concerns.
He told Inside Housing: “Now is the time to look at increasing capital investment in social rented housing.
“The lion’s share of public investment goes into demand-side subsidy – £25bn of housing benefit a year – and a very small amount of investment goes into supply-side investment in affordable housing.”
