Proposals provoke anger because private firms will not be regulated in the same way as RSLs
Housing associations have come out fighting after the government unveiled proposals to increase competition and pay development grant directly to private housebuilders.

The proposals were put out to consultation for 10 weeks in a paper issued by the Housing Corporation alongside the Draft Housing Bill. Both were published on Monday.

The document has angered many in the social housing sector because it appears to propose that private developers awarded grants would not be subjected to the same degree of regulation as registered social landlords.

Instead, housebuilders would sign a contract guaranteeing to offer homes at the same rent levels and build the homes to the same standards as associations.

The paper also suggests that housebuilders would not be expected to take on a long-term landlord role.

John Barker, chief executive of Moat Housing Group, said: "I would expect any organisation that gets grants to be subject to the same regulatory approach.

We need to make sure we do not lose the added value brought by housing associations in long-term and community building work."

Tim Holden, development director of Warden Housing Association, said a similar scheme had been tried before and housebuilders had not been interested: "The question is, how many [firms] really want to do it?"

However, Martin Donohue, chief executive of housebuilder Westbury, said builders were likely to be interested in the grants if they represented a sound commercial proposition and added that it could improve output of affordable housing.

Jim Coulter, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said the NHF would contest some of the proposals in the paper. "They are nothing short of back-door regulation creep," he said. "We are not at all happy with the potential for extending the intervention powers of the corporation," he said.

"The NHF will also be protesting against any payment of social housing grant to private developers for three reasons: first, there will end up being a dual standard of regulation; second, there is a big question mark over whether the private sector could bring any efficiency savings and third, is the private sector going to accept inspection by the Audit Commission?"

Source

Housing Today