The North-west regional housing board is on a collision course with the Treasury and ODPM over government plans to merge the nine regional housing boards with their planning counterparts.
The plan was floated in last week's Barker Report on housing supply as part of a package of measures to increase housebuilding.

But the North-west board says it is "southern-centric" and likely to cause chaos.

The board is drawing up an official response to the policy – which was adopted in chancellor Gordon Brown's Budget last Wednesday – for a meeting on 18 May.

Steve Machin, chief executive of the North-West regional assembly and a member the regional housing board, said: "The solutions Brown has come up with are not the ones that will tackle the problems we have in the North. Change now will cause chaos."

He also expressed concern that the key function of the regional planning boards – setting a regional spatial strategy – would be usurped by the strategy set by the regional housing boards.

He said the initiative was a response to limited land supply in the South-east, adding: "Our needs in the North-west are different.

If the government is serious about regional devolution, we must be in a position to decide what structures are best to deal with them."

Noel Spencer, chair of the North-West Regional Housing Forum and also on the board, said: "The regional housing board is starting to work really well in the North-west. It's too early to make major changes."

The government is to consult on how it will merge the boards. An ODPM spokeswoman said: "The key aims of this are to increase the supply of housing and to merge the functions of housing and planning, all of which are essential to deliver sustainable communities."

The preferred partners and their allocations for 2004-2006

London & Quadrant Group has kept its place as the UK’s largest developing registered social landlord. It came top of the Housing Corporation list of “preferred partners” – the 71 RSLs set to get much more grant than in previous years in an attempt to maximise the number of homes they can develop. It is set to get £225.3m in the next two years. L&Q’s main subsidiaries – London & Quadrant Housing Trust and Tower Homes – were allocated £117.8m and £107.5m respectively. They will build an estimated 3176 homes. Metropolitan Housing Trust received the largest single allocation: £136.6m to build 2417 homes. This is a huge increase: last year it was given about £18.5m and came 20th on the list of developers. Newcastle-based Home Group received the most – £60.3m – of any RSL outside the South-east, and Ujima was the highest ranked black and minority ethnic RSL , with more than £45m. But the troubled Peabody Trust and Places for People Group were not listed.

Source

Housing Today

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