HOUSING
Housing providers have just weeks left to bid for funding under the new Affordable Homes Programme. Jamie Ratcliff of the Homes & Communities Agency talks PSE through the changes.
with providers able to charge up to 80% of the market rent rather than a fixed social rent, will be a flexible way of encouraging new homes to be built despite the lower amount of government funding available.
M
It is a key part of the housing funding struc- ture for 2011-2015, known as the Affordable Homes Programme and worth £4.5bn, which replaces the 2008-2011 £8.4bn National Affordable Housing Programme (NAHP).
This is accompanied by a new approach from the funding body, the Homes & Communities Agency (HCA), to take a wider view and focus on regional and na- tional plans by providers, rather than the previous micro-approach of individually approving each scheme.
inisters hope that the new ‘afford- able rent’ model of social housing,
Jamie Ratcliff, head of intermediate mar- kets at the HCA, explains: “The key element that is different from what has come before is that there’s a much stronger focus on on- going dialogue and flexibility throughout the programme.
“We want to deliver as many homes as possible and there’s only limited funding available, certainly compared to recent years.”
“In the past, through the NAHP, providers had come to us with specific bids for spe- cific sites. They’ve liaised with local author- ity partners in relation to those, but we’ve been saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the basis of specific sites. This new approach drives us towards much closer partnerships between with local authorities, the HCA and provid- ers on an ongoing basis, across the whole of the provider’s programme, rather than just being about one site at a time.”
Regional vs local The HCA is now operating across six re-
gions in England, down from nine previ- ously. Under the previous arrangements, about 60% of the providers it dealt with worked across more than one area, with 40% being more locally-based organisa- tions.
Ratcliff said: “That gives a reasonable idea of the scope of the providers we deal with; there’s a few truly national providers, but most are operating within a regional area.
“The new approach simplifies things for providers to quite a large extent. With the way they operate their businesses, they’ll be looking at the number of units they want to deliver as part of a programme, and roughly where they’ll want to deliver them. Artificially slashing that up made it more complex for them. Whereas, working with them on the level their business actu- ally works at should make it much simpler
48 | public sector executive Mar/Apr 11
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