Never has the operating environment for social housing gone through such rapid and ongoing change as it is undergoing today. Yet how we make decisions about the future of our assets and their investment needs has not kept pace with this change.
Most organisations’ investment plans are determined by maintaining or achieving the decent homes standard; few understand the issues that will impact the long term viability of their homes.
Housing’s landscape is starting to shift, however. The Homes and Communities Agency has started to encourage landlords to understand the value of their existing assets and how they contribute to their business objectives.
Changes to the Regulatory Framework by the Homes and Communities Agency in April this year require registered providers to have a comprehensive register of their assets and liabilities.
The sector needs to be ready to respond to this new way of thinking – not just because
the regulator is asking the questions but because this is the only way it will be able to rise to the many challenges that lie ahead.
The essential truth is that we as a sector have to do more with the assets we have and the investments we make in them. If we don’t, the result will be an unsustainable and ineffective social housing portfolio that fails to meet the needs of current and future residents.
To respond to such a fundamental reappraisal of asset management, The Housing Forum set up a special Working Group that would examine the issues in depth. We asked ourselves, what are the obstacles to changing how we manage assets?
The decent homes programme was identified as one of the key barriers.
Set up in 2000 to raise all public housing to a minimum prescribed level, it has created an investment culture that looks at the individual property and its components in isolation and takes no real account of the environment in which it sits, how the property and surroundings need to be managed or the needs and aspirations of its residents.
That said, the programme has delivered a much needed improvement in the quality of some social homes. So we examined what we could learn from it that would help shape our future asset management and investment planning.
This report looks at the wider supply chain and how it might be able to contribute to creating greater value for landlords. It sets out innovative approaches that would enable the supply side to drive greater innovation, create greater value and challenge the current allocation of risk.
Investing in our assets - UK housing estateShare News Article
Date:
Contributors:
Chair: Jeremy Kape, Director of Investment
Affinity Sutton
Read the full report for practical insights and analysis.
You can download it below.