It's crunch time for the sector's influence

The most recent announcement – suggesting as it did an increased Approved Development Programme, funding for the nine pathfinder housing market renewal areas over three years, resources for arm's-length management organisations and a programme of support for key workers – is a few more steps in the right direction.

Importantly, it acknowledged that planning systems need to be improved and that £350m should be available to help achieve that. Better land assembly through a revamped English Partnerships and the confirmation that development in the South-east would be focused on four areas including Thames Gateway were also important features, although more such areas need to be identified.

These elements all seem to me to be important bones of a major new strategy, albeit in need of a little flesh. High-demand areas in the North have been overlooked and, like any policy framework, there will be gaps and things will be learned from experience. Finally and inevitably, as everyone says, there is not enough money.

I think we have got to realise that policy change takes time but a good start has been made. Any increases in state funding are going to be incremental. A key objective has to be to improve the quality of neighbourhoods and individual property design at the same time as providing new homes. History has shown that reducing quality to lower unit price to boost output only stores up problems for the future.

Equally, what can we do as organisations to be able to access land and buildings in order to turn them into attractive homes and neighbourhoods? If other people need to do this for us, we are likely to decline in influence. If we are able to do it ourselves effectively, then we will gain in influence.

Some of the issues we need to consider, and develop innovative approaches to, are:

finding new ways to cross-subsidise from sale and market renting to promote more and better affordable housing

A key objective has to be design. History has shown that reducing quality to lower unit price only stores up problems for the future

making the planning system work better for us so that we, as landowners, can be our own section 106 partners

looking at the grant regime so that gap funding for housing for sale and social housing grant for affordable housing are combined efficiently with other forms of funding to maximise the synergies between funding streams on particular sites

looking in detail at the status of housing association grant paid in the past on the balance sheets of housing associations in order to maximise our ability to raise more varied forms of private finance in future.

We should evaluate approaches adopted in other countries to see if there may be lessons in international experience which could be useful in the UK context. Countries such as the Netherlands have moved to models of funding that effectively either "write off" or change the basis of grants paid in the past, so that housing organisations are able to access more varied forms of private finance to develop more housing.

However, it is going to be up to us to identify to the government and particularly the Treasury, what set of policy and financial tools we would prefer, in order to produce the quality of product they (and our potential customers) want at the lowest possible state funding. We need to grasp this opportunity to present to the government coherent, cost-effective and pragmatic approaches. We also need to find ways to maximise collaboration between organisations to deliver the good quality housing of all types we need.