What does the future look like for housing associations in 2025 and beyond? What does it look like in a changing economic and social environment, one with greater commitments and fewer certainties – one where the government has promised to build 1.5 million new homes in a five-year parliament?
These questions were at the heart of a New Statesman roundtable debate, “More than a Landlord: What Does the Future Look Like for Housing Associations?”. Organised in tandem with Clarion Housing Group, the discussion took place earlier this year.
Setting the scene on behalf of the housing association sector, both Clare Miller, group chief executive of Clarion, and Scott Black, group chief operating officer of Places for People, painted a picture of their residents and the struggles many of them experience.
Clarion, England’s largest social landlord, houses 360,000 people in 125,000 homes. Of those, 18 per cent have gone without food at some point in the last 12 months, and 12 per cent are unemployed seeking work.
Meanwhile, a fifth of the homes are overcrowded. Similarly, Black said of Places for People residents that 20 per cent are struggling to feed themselves while 35 per cent cannot afford to heat their homes.
The future resident, Miller noted, is only going to be “older, poorer and in worse health. So, the problems that we witness today are only going to get more extreme.”
It is in this context that both Miller and Black set out a series of “asks”. Miller – imagining herself as “minister for a day” – detailed four priorities. First, she said, “we need a national plan” that outlines how the UK intends to house its population. Second, government must offer housing associations greater economic certainty. “The idea that we can run our organisation on a one-year – or even a five-year – forecast fails to recognise the financial commitment we need to make,” Miller said.
Third, and related, the sector needs more investment. Finally, Miller said, the government needs to reconsider what it is asking of housing associations today. “The reality is that there is not enough money in the system and therefore hard choices have to be made,” she said in a plea for clarity of purpose.
Black built on this agenda, arguing for a ten-year rent settlement that tracks the consumer price index (CPI) of inflation, plus 1 per cent. He also made the case for greater fluidity in the planning system, and more investment in skills and training to help address a repairs and maintenance bill that currently amounts to £1m a day. “A large part of that goes to third-party contractors because we cannot find the skills we need to employ the people we need,” observed Black.
Offering a perspective from opposition, the shadow housing minister David Simmonds observed that it “feels as if more words have been spoken than bricks have been laid in the debate about housing”. Offering a few more words, he focused on two ways in which housing associations could play a role in influencing the debate. First, he suggested that they could help meet supply by becoming “a significant developer or builder”. Second, in the interest of creating a sustainable “pipeline of houses”, he advocated a role in helping older people downsize and, in turn, creating starter homes for younger people.
On the rent settlement, while some cautioned that it might lead to higher rents for the working poor, others insisted it is a necessity. Alistair Smyth, director of policy and research at the National Housing Federation pointed to recent research his organisation had undertaken. Accordingly, a settlement that includes rent convergence, amounting to an additional £3 per week per resident, would generate an additional £3.5bn in rental income which, in turn, could lead to 90,000 more new social homes over ten years compared to a rent settlement without convergence.
More broadly, a long-term financial settlement is necessary to secure future housing needs and to encourage banks and other private-sector institutions to invest. According to one estimate from Cara Pacitti, senior economist at the Resolution Foundation, it requires £50bn to restore affordable housing population levels to what they were around 2010.
Earlier in the debate, David Simmonds had argued that the planning system is misunderstood. He pointed to the 1.5 million properties with consent already in place as a “rebuke to those who say the planning system doesn’t move fast enough”.
Others remained unconvinced. Chris Curtis, Labour MP for Milton Keynes North – and member of the Housing Select Committee – said it was “ridiculous” that social developers were having to “wait 15 years to get things through planning and, possibly, another five years for the stupidly set up [judicial review] system”.
Offering a practical example, Places for People’s Scott Black said: “We’ve got five or six sites where we are desperate to start but we can’t because they are ‘under water’.”
Much of the debate focused on the evolving role of housing associations. Naushabah Khan, Labour MP for Gillingham and Rainham and another member of the Housing Committee, noted how lines have become “blurred” as housing associations are asked to take on service functions that traditionally have fallen to central and local government. In the pursuit of precision, she said: “The ability to deliver quality housing has to be a priority,” adding that “it is impossible for every housing association to do everything”.
Others wondered aloud – in the words of the housing ombudsman Richard Blakeway – whether it was possible to turn “what sounds like a burden for providers into an opportunity”. Sophia Worringer, deputy policy director, at the Centre for Social Justice, noted, for example, that by playing a role in upskilling their tenants, housing associations could create the trades needed to maintain their own properties. Blakeway added: “There is an intimacy in the relationship between landlord and resident.”
To learn more, read More than a landlord: A future of opportunity, a special supplement on affordable housing, produced by the New Statesman, in partnership with Clarion and Places for People.