Jun 5th 2017, 12:13
Blog 5th June 2017
Last November, London Mayor Sadiq Khan secured £3.15billion in government funds to help start building at least 90,000 affordable homes by 2021. The Mayor and Government have agreed at least 58,500 of this total will be a combination of London Living Rent and shared ownership. This is intended to help Londoners who would otherwise struggle to rent or buy. The Mayor published his ‘Homes for Londoners: Affordable Homes Programme 2016-21’ funding guidance in November 2016.
We have just published our briefing paper on ‘Homes for Londoners – The Affordable Homes Programme 2016 to 2021’. The purpose of this briefing paper is to summarise the funding guidance, set it in context, outline the response of the sector and to provide some commentary. It includes the following sections:
Your copy can be freely downloaded from HERE
Sir Robert Naylor’s Review of National Health Services Property and Estates was published in March 2017. One if its proposals is for the sale of National Health Service land for housing development through a new housing association owned by the National Health Service. Naylor found that unaffordable housing is a barrier to recruitment and retention of staff. His idea is that new homes would be built either by existing housing associations or by the new housing association owned by the National Health Service. New homes would be earmarked for National Health Service staff thus enabling them to access affordable housing.
Ministers had not responded to the Naylor report before the general election was called. However, the proposal appears to have found favour with Theresa May, the Prime Minister, who told the BBC that she is now backing the proposals in the Naylor report.
Gavin Barwell, the Minister for Housing, also revealed in an interview with ‘Inside Housing’ last week that the Conservatives’ proposal that the government should enter into ‘deals’ with local authorities and housing associations to deliver more ‘social’ housing was, in fact, a proposal that they should deliver more ‘affordable’ housing. Nonetheless, it will still be interesting to see how these ‘deals’ will be constructed should the Conservatives be returned to office on Thursday.
I am currently finalising my preparations for our seminar ‘Developments in Local Authority Housing Finance in England 2017’ will be held on 14th June 2017 in London and on 5th July 2017 in Leeds. It will be fully up to date and will consider:
This seminar is proving popular but we still have a few places available. For further information or to make a booking, please click HERE