Blogs from December 2013

1st December 2013

Last Wednesday I chaired the November meeting of the Board of Impact Housing Association. It was held at the Eden Rural Foyer in Penrith which is part of Impact Housing Association. The main items on our agenda were our business plan for 2014 and our strategy for long-term finance and loans. The Foyer is celebrating its tenth anniversary and the celebrations preceded the board meeting.

Friday saw the opening of Impact Housing Association’s new development of fifteen houses at Grasmere in South Lakeland. This is a village where high house prices and market rents make it difficult for local people with modest incomes to afford a home. Unfortunately, affordable homes are in short supply so our scheme, which was completed without grant from the Homes & Communities Agency, is very welcome. It achieved coverage on the ITV Border news that can be seen at: http://www.itv.com/news/border/story/2013-11-29/affordable-homes-in-grasmere/

I also spent a lot of time last week preparing a database of multiple choice questions on management accounts for the Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy.

This week I will be speaking at the National Housing Federation introductory workshop on Service Charges on Monday and their Leaseholder and Tenant Service Charges Conference on Tuesday, both of which will be held in Manchester. Details can be found on their website at http://www.housing.org.uk/events/browse/service-charges-an-introductory-workshop-1 and http://www.housing.org.uk/events/browse/leaseholder-and-tenant-service-charges . My first session is in excellent customer service and my second session is on service charges in sheltered housing.

While on the subject of service charges, our latest briefing paper is on Supported Housing and Service Charges and can be freely downloaded from http://www.awics.co.uk/dynamicdata/data/docs/supported%20housing%20and%20service%20charges%20-%20briefing%20paper.pdf  

On Thursday the Chancellor of the Exchequer will make his autumn statement. I am puzzled by the fact that it is called the ‘autumn statement’ because I thought that December was in the winter! However, it is likely to be an interesting statement with the Chancellor upgrading his forecasts for growth during 2014; confirming that fuel duty will not increase next year; introducing free school meals in primary schools; reducing ‘green taxes’ on the energy companies; yet announcing further austerity measures for public services. Other measures of interest to housing and local government may include freezing Business Rates and scaling down ‘Help to Buy’ or introducing more property taxes amidst fears of an overheating housing market in London and the Southeast.

Local Government and Housing bodies are lobbying for a liberalisation of the current restrictions on local authority borrowing for housing; and for a guarantee that there will be no more reductions in funding for local government but I would be surprised if these requests are met.

I intend to publish a briefing paper on the autumn statement as soon as possible after the statement is made. If you would like to make sure of getting a copy please email enquiries@awics.co.uk with the words ‘autumn statement’ in the title.