Just three years ago, UK housing associations were facing a pretty dire future. David Cameron’s government had just cut all funding for building mainstream affordable housing, directing money instead at the ill-fated cut-price “starter homes” for first-time buyers, and slashed the rents on which associations depend. Paul Hackett, chief executive of 44,000-home social landlord Optivo, and chair of the influential G15 group of the biggest London associations, remembers it well. “The absolute low point was the budget in July 2015. That’s the point when housing association rents were cut by 1% a year to 2020, and for the first time in living memory, there was no government funding at all for any sub-market rented housing,” he says.

But with Theresa May’s regime has come a new attitude. Because now, from out of nowhere, housing associations – or “registered providers” in the current jargon – are the valued partners of a government determined to build 300,000 homes a year. May used the National Housing Federation summit in London last month to formally reset the relationship, announcing long-term funding deals and calling for an end to the stigma for occupiers of social housing. “It’s just astonishing,” Hackett says. “We’ve seen a huge improvement in the relationship. Government really understands what we’re trying to do.”

“It’s just astonishing. We’ve seen a huge improvement in the relationship. Government really understands what we’re trying to do”

Paul Hackett, G15

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