‘Everyone has missed out’, say senior Hill and Clarion figures
The Greater London Authority (GLA) has issued confidential letters informing social housing providers of £6bn worth of grant allocations for development, Housing Today understands.
Speaking at the Building the Future Conference on Wednesday, two senior housing sector figures revealed that housing associations and local authorities were told at the end of last week whether their bids had been successful.
The GLA is responsible for administering the government’s £39bn Social and Affordable Homes Programme in the capital, with London’s portion of the scheme worth £11.7bn.
“The GLA have issued letters to RPs, but it’s all very much confidential at this stage until everyone agrees with what’s there,” said Nick Wood, regional managing director, Clarion.
“But the GLA were three times over bid for the £12bn that they had available. So […] no one will have got what they wanted through that process”.
In response to a query from Housing Today, a spokesperson for the mayor of London confirmed the GLA had “written to bidders confirming offers of funding allocations totalling more than £6 billion, with around £5 billion still available by 2036”.
Allocations for the capital were not announced alongside the £9.58bn first wave allocations for the rest of the country, revealed in August by Homes England.
However, it was announced at that point that 60% of funds in London would go to local authorities, far higher than in other parts of England.
Helen Rieman, business growth director at The Hill Group, told the conference that there were “some really good results for a lot of the RPs outside of London” but that “across London, everyone is having a relatively disappointing round”.
“I think you can really see how the government is really looking to position delivery outside of In this first round,” she said.
Wood added that there was a degree to which this was understandable.
“You look in the southeast, the difference in certain areas between an affordable home and a social rent home is that there’s about £100,000 worth of additional grant to convert that tenure from one to the other,” he said.
“You’ve got that on top of the high building costs and everything else in the southeast, which just means you know the amount of money needed to make affordable schemes viable is significantly higher than you have in other parts of the country.
“So actually, I think that rebalancing… If you want to build more homes, you do need to build them outside of London, the southeast.”
Speaking to Housing Today after the panel event, Rieman said that “everyone has missed out, no one has got the programme”, adding that the GLA was taking an inflexible approach to funding.
“What they’ve done is they have only allocated to specific schemes,” she said, rather than giving money for more flexible, open-ended programmes of development.
The mayor’s spokesperson said: ”We recognise some partners will be disappointed with the outcome, and we will continue working closely with Government, councils and other housing providers to deliver the affordable homes that Londoners desperately need.”
“The Mayor has been clear that tackling London’s housing crisis means building at scale, with a particular focus on delivering high-quality social and affordable homes.
“The £11.7 billion secured for this programme is the biggest affordable housing settlement London has ever received, but the strength of the bids means demand significantly exceeds the funding available at this stage.
Housing Today understands that the GLA is considering a second round of allocations next April.
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