Transfer notes

Investment options for social housing, including stock transfer, are inevitably subject to the pressures of politics and public opinion, and the results can be quite dramatic. Lawyers in other fields have their landmark House of Lords decisions, but few have the equivalent of Office of the Deputy Prime Minister guidance that rewrites the rule book. I am therefore awaiting the Communities Plan with both interest and trepidation.

It may be that it focuses heavily on the politically pressing issues of affordable housing in the South-east, but it will also chart the way forward for housing and regeneration in the widest sense. The suggestion is that there will be revised stock transfer guidance published a month or two after the Communities Plan appears.

There are plenty of challenges ahead in the transfer "marketplace" and it is to be hoped the Communities Plan affords flexibility to permit some important technical issues to be addressed in that guidance. When the process leading to the Communities Plan began it was billed as a way of doing transfer "differently and better". Let us hope it meets those aspirations.