ROOF Blog

A consultation on future core housing design and sustainability standards has been published by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). It aims to stimulate a debate on how to prioritise the quality of new housing in a challenging financial climate. It seeks views on a series of options for how the national housing and regeneration agency might design and phase in new standards and apply them to its programme. Partners and other interested parties are asked to comment on the proposals and help shape further development of the HCA’s core design and sustainability standards.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has announced that Saxon Weald and Eastbourne borough council have been successful in a bid for almost £6.2 million grant funding to develop an extra care scheme in Langney. Derry Court and the land adjacent to it, owned by East Sussex county council, will be developed together to achieve the purpose built scheme.  The development is forecast to provide 62 high-quality self-contained apartments for older people who have an assessed care need and require support with daily living.

The government risks repeating the mistakes of the postwar housing boom by wasting hundreds of millions of pounds on funding ‘grotty’ new homes, say MPs. The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), which has an annual investment budget of more than £5bn, has admitted that 27 of the private-sector projects it has bailed out scored five or less out of 20 on the industry’s Building for Life benchmark, with two scoring just 1.5. Homes failed on a range of basic measures, including poor space standards and over-reliance on single-aspect dwellings; inflexibility; low sustainability standards; and poor compatibility with neighbouring properties.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has shortlisted 265 bids totalling nearly £550m in round two of its Kickstart housing delivery programme.

Shortlisted bidders include a mix of RSLs along with national and local developers aiming to unlock up to 22,000 homes across the country.

Bidding opened in September with the criteria that eligible schemes should be housing-led with a minimum of 50 homes (fewer in rural areas or if the scheme delivers to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5 or 6) and that sites should have detailed planning consent in place or the ability to achieve this by the end of March 2010.

Sir Bob Kerslake, HCA chief executive, said: ‘Kickstart continues to be a crucial component in maintaining momentum in the house building industry.’

A due diligence process will now follow, which will look in detail at value for money, design, financial viability and risk, as well as an assessment of quick delivery.

Construction will start on a third fewer social homes next year, in a vivid sign of wider impending restraints on government spending.

The news comes as the country’s property quango the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) reveals that the value of its development assets has plunged £1.1bn as a result of the housing crash.

But this financial fillip will only have a temporary impact, according to targets set by the HCA. Overall completions will continue to rise from a total of 55,625 this year to 61,500 next year, partly as a result of the government’s injection of money.

But housing starts will drop away next year, suggesting that there will be fewer completions in the coming years.

Only 29,900 grant-funded housing starts are scheduled for 2010-11, a drop of 34 per cent from the 45,500 target for the current financial year.

Of those, the number of social rented homes built under the National Affordable Housing Programme will halve from 30,389 in 2008-09 to 14,500 next year.