The bidding criteria through which affordable home providers will access at least £8 billion in Government funds was announced, with the publication of the Housing Corporation's Prospectus for its 2008-11 National Affordable Housing Programme (NAHP). For the first time the Corporation's programme covers a full three year period.
Publication of the Corporation's Prospectus follows the Housing Green Paper Homes for the Future, which announced investment of at least £8 billion in affordable housing in 2008-11, offering a £3 billion increase over the current funding period. The Green Paper sets out the Government's ambition to meet the Country's need for social homes, to tackle housing affordability and to support quality and sustainability.
Bidders for the £8 billion Housing Corporation NAHP will have a key role in helping meet the Government's targets, increasing the supply of both social homes and affordable home ownership options to help people get a foot on the housing ladder.
In the next three years supply of new social homes will rise by 50%, to produce at least 45,000 homes in 2010/11. In addition in each of the three years funding will help produce more than 25,000 low cost homes for affordable home ownership.
The Prospectus details the exact criteria organisations will need to meet when bidding for a share of the £8 billion NAHP, both through the Partnering route and the Specialist route.
Organisations bidding via the Partnering route have already been short listed following an earlier expression of interest stage. Expectations that bidders will reach higher quality standards are detailed both in this Prospectus and in the Corporation's Pre-Prospectus for the 2008-11 NAHP programme.
Specific criteria are set out to require bidders to:
At the same time, to meet ambitious Government output targets, housing providers are asked to rise to challenging efficiency targets:
Housing and Planning Minister Yvette Cooper unveiled a major £500 million package of proposals to accelerate the building of homes - ensuring both that new homes are greener and the focus is on brownfield land.
A major set of incentives, provided through the new Housing and Planning Delivery Grant (HPDG), will reward councils which speed up housing supply delivery and maximise the supply of building land in their areas. Local authorities that show they are leading the way in both of these, and helping to meet the Government's ambition of 240,000 new homes per year, will receive a share of the new funding incentive.
The Minister also announced progress in delivering more green homes and more homes on brownfield sites. She revealed that 200 more disused public sector sites across the country have been identified as potential sites for housing and could contribute thousands of new homes. This brings the total of brownfield sites being assessed for development suitability to more than 750.
She also revealed an enthusiastic response to the Government's challenge to the house building industry for all new homes to be zero carbon by 2016. Over 150 organisations, including housebuilders, green groups and local councils, have now put their names to the 2016 Commitment to work together to build 240,000 new zero carbon homes a year within a decade.
152 signatories, including the Home Builders Federation, Local Government Association, Green Building Council and WWF as well as individual developers and councils have now taken the green building pledge and signed up to the Commitment.
Councils will be required to identify at least 5 years' worth of sites ready for housing and a further 10 years' worth for future development.
A lack of suitable development land is often cited as the reason for blockage in the delivery of new homes. Yvette Cooper has made clear that, while many councils are ahead of the rest in delivering more good quality homes quickly, some are failing to be proactive enough in identifying the homes their communities need.
The Minister will propose that HPDG will be awarded to those councils which:
She additionally announced that the body that will drive forward the Government's plans for housing growth will be called the Homes and Communities Agency. This reflects its role in delivering new homes and in regenerating existing and creating new communities.
The agency, as announced by the Prime Minister in his legislative programme statement on 11 July, will be at the heart of Government's plans for delivering these targets and ensuring the creation of thriving communities through regeneration and renewal.
The contracts of the 23 Homebuy agents, which started in April 2006, were due to finish in April next year but will now be extended until 31 March 2009.
The Housing Corporation said that the extension would 'ease burdens' on housing associations, as they won't have to bid for new contracts until next year. This should help them cope with the ever-changing Homebuy suite of products, which they have to market.
The extension should allow for new shared equity products arising from the shared equity competition to be taken into consideration by prospective and existing Homebuy agents when submitting their bids.
The Corporation believes extending the contract to avoid the new bidding round will help to ease burdens on those associations engaged in the delivery the Homebuy agent role and free them up to concentrate on the 2008 bid round.
It appears that social landlords have struggled to sell the open market Homebuy product since it was launched by the Government in October 2006. The cost of qualifying for the scheme has pushed it beyond the price range of many public sector workers.
Metropolitan Home Ownership is reported to be one organisation unlikely to spend all the money it had been allocated for open market Homebuy.
Despite a revamp of the scheme in July and the recently announced reforms to that programme in the green paper, many associations fear little improvement will materialise.
Tower Homes reported it has already handed back £16 million of the £42 million it was allocated and Moat HA saw its allocation cut from more than £19 million to £17 million earlier this year.
The Housing Corporation said targets set for the coming year would be met. The CLG were reported to have said there was 'no suggestion that low-cost homeownership budgets are being reduced.'
