Social housing supplement Policy and funding

face era of cuts

Spending on housing is expected to plummet.

badly affected by the fuel price rises we’ve seen over the last few years, so our members are very keen on improving energy effi ciency, but if the money’s not coming through, a lot of those programmes will have to be scaled back.’ Some housing associations are already looking at new funding ideas. ‘We have to look at more innovative forms of fi nancing,’ says Ciniglio. Radian is examining a new way to get social housing

tenants involved in pay-as-you-save refurbishment schemes. It wants to encourage banks to lend money to social housing tenants for their own refurbishments, by creating a so-called ‘Revolving Guarantee Fund’. The fund would give a guarantee to the banks that it would step in if the tenant defaults on the home improvement loan. ‘It’s an idea that comes from Europe and the reality is they’ve had very few defaults,’ says Ciniglio. ‘You don’t need much money in the fund to lever out money from the private sector, at a low interest rate.’ He believes regional housing boards would be

willing to put up the money for the funds. So far Radian has held one workshop to discuss the idea, attended by delegates from the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the Energy Saving Trust and the Homes and Communities Agency. A second workshop is planned. ‘I can’t say they are all signed up, we need to do more

spokesman. ‘We fear it could mean hundreds of thousands of affordable homes not being built and more people going onto the housing list, which is already at a record high.’ More than three million people will be living in

overcrowded housing by 2013 because of the impact of the recession and lack of affordable homes, the federation says. Four-and-a-half million people are on housing waiting lists. In 2007, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown

pledged to build 3m new homes by 2020, of which 1m would be affordable, but the federation fears that the total number of affordable homes built by 2020 could be less than half a million if spending cuts are introduced. ‘Our fear is that, after several years of good progress,

with the number of affordable homes being built slowly increasing, that will go into reverse and a bad situation will become a whole lot worse,’ says the spokesman. Retrofi tting could also be hit. ‘A lot of our tenants are on low wages and have been

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work and another workshop, but the word from Europe is that this is the coming thing,’ says Ciniglio. The South-East of England Regional Development Agency has secured money from the European Regional Development Fund for Radian to go on researching the idea. Paul Longman, chair of the Building Research

Housing Group at the Building Research Establishment, and group manager for property services at South Essex Homes, says: ‘The media is full of stories about belt- tightening, but that doesn’t mean we can stop making plans.’ South Essex Homes is bidding for £58m over three years to bring all its properties up to the Decent Homes standard. Given the commitment made by the UK government

to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, Longman believes that areas such as refurbishment will tend to be safeguarded. However, he adds: ‘The question will be how much the energy companies will have to contribute, and what grants are available in the future.’ ●

June 2010 CIBSE Journal

23

Will the coalition government look to housing as a key area for spending cuts?

“None of the political parties said publicly that they would protect the housing budget”

– National Housing Federation

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