7th March 2017

Blog 7th March 2017

I am writing this blog on the train while travelling to London to present: ‘All You Want to Know about Local Authority Housing Finance’ tomorrow. This seminar is well attended as usual and I am looking forward to meeting all the delegates. For details of this seminar please click HERE

This week we have launched our seminar: ‘All You Want to Know about Housing Association Finance’. The London session will be held in May and the Leeds session will be held in October. These seminars provide a solid grounding in the basics of housing association finance including:

• The financial environment in which housing associations work
• Regulatory requirements including Viability and Value for Money
• Income & Expenditure Accounts, Balance Sheets and Cash Flows
• How Development and other Capital Expenditure is financed
• Budgeting, Budgetary Control and Risk Management
• Asset Management and Treasury Management
• Developments in government policy including ‘right to buy’, rent reductions, pay to stay and welfare reform
• The implications of the Housing & Planning Act 2016 – including low cost home-ownership
• The future funding of Supported and Sheltered housing and community investment

For further information or to make a booking please click HERE

Last week we published our briefing paper on the Local Government Finance Settlement for England issued recently by the Department for Communities & Local Government. It is written by our Associate Consultant, Tom Lawrence. The paper contains a summary and commentary on the settlement. Tom’s conclusion is that:

“The increased flexibility on the social care precept will generally be welcomed across local government. The switch from New Homes Bonus to the new adult social care support grant will be welcomed by the authorities which gain from this but not by those who lose out. But neither makes any kind of dent in a serious long-term funding problem for the public sector. Much more radical changes are needed for this and the options that would could solve the issue are getting ever narrower.”

Your copy can be freely downloaded from HERE

The 2017 editions of our popular publications on local authority housing finance and on service charges have now been published. These books provide an invaluable and up to date overview of these important topics:

• For further information about ‘All You Want to Know about Local Authority Housing Finance’ please click HERE
• For further information about ‘All You Want to Know about Service Charges in Social Housing’ please click HERE

This week the Department for Work & Pensions has abolished housing benefit for people aged between 18 and 21 with a limited number of exceptions. This measure has been widely criticised in the sector as having the potential to save the Exchequer very little while potentially causing severe hardship to many young people. This will also create a financial challenge for housing associations and local authorities who house a significant number of young people.

Phillip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, will unveil his budget tomorrow (8th March 2017). There are hopes that it might contain additional resources for the National Health Service, Adult Social Care and / or Affordable Housing. However, the Chancellor has signalled over the weekend that the resources are not available to make any significant increases in budgets. The United Kingdom government continues to have a significant budget deficit and it has recently been announced that economic growth was only 1.8% during 2016. The economy is heavily dependent on consumer borrowing, inflation is increasing and there is continued uncertainty caused by Brexit. I intend to comment further on the budget in my blog next week.