ROOF Blog

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.

Guidance on renegotiating section 106 agreements is to be released by the Homes and Communities Agency later this month. The guidance for local authorities and developers is needed following a High Court ruling last year that quashed Blythe Valley borough council’s 30 per cent affordable housing policy and a similar High Court challenge currently against Wakefield Metropolitan district council.

Communities and Local Government will reveal before 21 July which of its programmes’ budgets are to be cut to help fund the £1.5 billion housing package, and has suggested the Homes and Communities Agency may bear the brunt. Director-general of housing and planning at the department has insisted that reports that the Decent Homes programme would be plundered are not true. He said he would give details before the summer recess of parliament starts.

The Homes and Communities Agency says it is ready to begin delivering the significantly enlarged programme of public house building when it takes responsibility of the additional £1.5 billion promised on Monday by Gordon Brown. The HCA will allocate the funds through its National Affordable Housing Programme, and via the existing bidding process which it says will kickstart stalled schemes and help local authorities directly.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has published guidance on how social landlords can bid for part of the additional £84 million funding package to cover cavity wall insulation. The scheme aims to cover the properties which would not normally have been filled under the decent homes programme because they were hard to treat, and expects to deliver on 130,000 homes across the country during the next two years.