Housing association giant says it has completed just 53% of the homes it expected to
Sovereign has completed just 53% of its planned development programme for the first half of the financial year, citing issues with availability of materials.
The housing association giant said in a trading update today it has completed 458 homes in the year to 30 September 2021, significantly less than the 857 it had budgeted for.
The 60,000-home provider said: “The development programme has continued to be slower than expected due primarily to resource and material availability issues impacting the whole of the building sector”. It also said development had been impacted by the ’Covid variant’.
See also>> Housing association accounts 2020/21 coverage all in one place
It said that it is now expecting the development figure for the whole 2021/22 year to be more in line with last year’s pandemic-hit figure of 1,099 completions. It had originally targeted 1,900 completions for the year.
Mark Washer, chief executive of Sovereign, said in the organisation’s financial accounts for 2020/21 that the organisation is “building towards” a target of 2,000 new homes a year. In 2019/20, the last year before the pandemic, Sovereign completed 1,773 homes.
The update also showed Sovereign’s post-tax surplus for the second quarter is down 5% from the first quarter, dropping from £23m to £21.9m. However its turnover rose by 2% to £104.9m.
Other housing association half-yearly updates this week:
In other updates, 38,000-home Livewest reported a 17.5% drop in surplus due to higher disposals of homes the previous year.
Flagship, which manages 32,000 homes, reported a 41% increase in surplus to £46.1million and boosted turnover by £27% to £121.4m. It said it built 249 affordable homes in the half year despite the sector experiencing “challenges on both labour and materials availability” The group is targeting the delivery of 4,000 homes over the next five years.
Great Places, which manages 24,000 homes, made a surplus of £11.1m for the first six months of the year, which it said was £0.4m above budget. Property sales generated an additional £0.9m in surplus.
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