Building the future: How registered providers can access funding to meet Britain’s housing

The CEOs of Torus, Irwell Valley Homes, The Regenda Group and Mosscare St Vincent, who spoke to us for our Ask the Leaders video series, are all optimistic about the role that housing associations will play in the provision of plentiful homes and safe, productive communities for the future.

Key to realising that optimism is the funding that housing associations will need to build new homes and to refurbish existing stock to address the challenges of building safety and decarbonisation in addition to ongoing routine maintenance and upgrading.

Whilst the day-to-day activities of housing associations are funded primarily by rent and service charge payments received from or on behalf of those living in their properties, this income cannot support the huge capital costs faced by the sector over the coming years. Reports suggest that the total cost of decarbonisation and building safety works for housing association stock in England could total £46billion and a report by the National Housing Federation in 2019 estimated that, in order to build the 145,000 social homes each year between 2021 – 2031 to meet England’s housing need, an average of £14.6billion will be required in capital grant from government in each of those ten years.

Whilst there are numerous disparate pockets of funding from various sources, such as government, local authorities and Homes England, it is clear that housing associations need streamlined access to significant funding sources to achieve their own ambitions and the expectations placed on them by others.  

Housing associations are generally a good prospect for funders – they have long term business plans, regular income from rent and shared ownership sales and significant assets that can be used for security – as borrowing will always be important. However, with their focus on not just building and refurbishing houses but also working collaboratively to build communities and improve the lives and aspirations of their residents, and considering the huge social and economic advantages that this can bring for everyone, major government funding must be directed towards them.

Watch Part 3 of our Ask the Leaders video series here.