Memorandum from Yorkshire and Humber Assembly (CRED 12)
As Chair of the Regional Housing Board in Yorkshire and Humber I am pleased to provide the following evidence to your enquiry into Housing and the Credit crunch.
The credit crunch is having a profound impact on the rate at which we are building new homes in the region, in the public and private sectors. The targets that Government has set, both for new affordable homes, and for house-building in general are not going to be met at least in the short to medium-term.
Within the region we have been proactive in identifying and responding to the challenges posed by the current market conditions. In early summer members of the Board, including representatives from Housing Associations and private developers met to discuss the crunch issues that they were facing. As a result of that meeting the Board produced an Action Plan, the first of its kind nationally (Annex 1). The Plan identifies a small number of key actions that we believe will have a big impact in the region in the short to medium term:
· Minimising the risk of increased homelessness, and to helping Local Authorities deal with the issue; · Improving access to finance, and helping Housing Associations sell existing shared ownership homes; · Helping to retain and effectively use capacity in the construction industry; · Mitigating the risks associated with the non delivery of regionally agreed strategies; · Supporting delivery of affordable homes in the region - to address problems of long term undersupply; · Supporting best practice in terms of tenure choice - working with housing options advice services within Local Authorities;
· Facilitating debate between developers and Local Authorities on shifting scheme viability; and · Working to improve local, sub-regional and regional access to current intelligence on the state of housing markets.
All these actions have been taken by the Regional Housing Board using existing resources and exploiting the strong partnership that exist amongst those involved in housing in the region. However, there are some areas outside of the Housing Boards control, where additional support from Government would help.
One such area is Housing and Planning Delivery Grant. Some of our larger urban and rural authorities have made assumptions on the level of grant they will receive this year, but these assumptions were underpinned by anticipated levels of new house building. Now that developers are`mothballing' sites leading to a drop in completions, local authorities, through no fault of their own, will not receive the anticipated level of grant. It would be helpful if the grant could be paid instead for preparatory work by authorities to bring sites forward ready for development as soon as market conditions improve.
Another issue the Select Committee might consider is to recommend to Government that they revisit the split between housing resources within the Regional Housing Pot, currently identified as National Affordable Housing Programme and Private Sector Renewal Pot. Both of these, in different ways deliver affordable housing. However, as the National Affordable Housing Pot is in danger of being underspent, some flexibility around this resource could be used to support a package of work to ensure long-term housing delivery. Examples of this work could be:
· Acquiring land and preparing sites for further delivery and regeneration; · To help First Time Buyers access finance, particularly around Shared Ownership products; · Potentially to support Mortgage Rescue; · To commission sub-regions to run exemplar pilots on freeing up existing stock/making better use of empty homes.
I hope the Select Committee finds this submission useful, I would of course be very please to provide further, oral evidence.
October 2008 |