Charlie Adams, chief executive of Hyde Housing and a member of the Amphion board, has issued members with a discussion paper outlining six options:
- terminating the consortium
- maintaining the staus quo
- building relations with another supplier
- creating a “buying club”
- creating “mini-consortia”
- transforming into an OSM forum.
Amphion was set up in 1999. Housing associations paid up to £5000 to join and have invested about £600,000 in total in the consortium during the past three years. The hope was that planners’ focus on brownfield sites, which suit the use of OSM techniques, would lead to a surge in demand for technology such as Amphion’s own timber-frame construction system, Tee-U-Tech.
But Amphion has built just 500 units in its three years of existence, although its order book for 2003/4 is currently 450 and deputy prime minister John Prescott is believed to be exploring the potential of OSM techniques to solve the crisis in affordable housing provision.
Adams reveals in his discussion paper that “one of the major impediments to the development of Amphion has been an inability to obtain sites”. He adds that the system of planning gain or section 106 agreements has also proved problematic as housebuilders have been reluctant to adopt the Tee-U-Tech system.
Adams told Housing Today that a potential solution to the problem of obtaining sites was “mini-consortia” – groups of housing associations that would talk directly to developers that own vast tranches of land in areas such as the Thames Gateway in south-east England.
Adams said: “Some developers are up for discussing the possibility of cooperation as far as the provision of social housing on-site is concerned.
“Hyde and Amicus Housing Association have written to a number of developers with specific regard to two of the growth areas – Ashford in Kent and the Thames Gateway.”
Responses to the paper are due by 12 February, after which members will meet to discuss their decision.
Source
Housing Today
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