As part of our work to support housing partnerships across the North and work closely with key government departments, we welcomed colleagues from the Social Housing Directorate at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) to the North East for a tour of members’ sites.

Emma Payne (Director, Social Housing) and Nick Burkitt (Deputy Director of Affordable Housing Regulation & Investment), who are responsible for the Affordable Homes Programme, spent the day engaging with the North East Housing Partnership (NEHP) with visits to regeneration and development sites across the region.

The tour began with a visit to Livin Housing’s Jubilee Fields Estate in Shildon. The estate is a shining example of Livin’s placemaking approach to regeneration, with a strong focus on engaging with the community and local partners to address estate-wide issues.

Next stop was to Livin’s Laburnum Grove development in St. Helen Auckland, a new 59-home development on brownfield land. All homes meet the Building Regulations Part M4(2) for accessibility and adaptability, and Livin made one home in the development a high energy efficiency demonstrator home in anticipation of a Future Homes Standard.

Midway through the day, delegates stopped for a lunch event with a presentation from NEHP Chair, Paul Fiddaman. With housing association and local authority representatives from across the NEHP in attendance, Paul presented on the challenges and opportunities for north east housing providers in delivering new homes and regenerating communities.

Included in the visit was Karbon Homes’ 750-home Seaham Garden Village development site, with funding for the project coming through Karbon’s Strategic Partnership with Homes England. The development will feature a primary school, health and wellbeing facility, and an innovation centre. Karbon plans to heat the affordable homes using a district heating scheme powered by minewater heat.

Travelling further North along the coast, delegates visited Gentoo’s Cricketers Hill development in North Sunderland. The site was previously a Primary School but was demolished in 2009 and in 2023 the site transferred to Gentoo, with 115 affordable homes now under development. Each home will achieve an EPC A rating, with Air Source Heat Pumps, PV Panel, fill insulation and electric vehicle charging.

The final leg of the visit brought delegates to Bernicia’s Holborn Docks development in South Shields. Bernicia’s 36 affordable homes will be delivered alongside a wider regeneration project on the former industrial site, with South Tyneside Council leading the project with the aim to reinvigorate the brownfield land and deliver high-quality family homes.

The visit provided senior civil servants, responsible for funding and policy decisions – including the delivery of the Affordable Homes Programme – which impact social housing providers, with the opportunity to see the productive work members are doing. It highlighted the great partnership work which is happening across the North to deliver new homes and regeneration projects.

The NHC will continue to engage with civil servants and other key stakeholders to highlight the work our members are doing to transform communities across the North.

 

 

 

Heartwarming Homes, a joint NHC, Placeshapers and Tpas project, has been shortlisted for Campaign of the Year at the UK Housing Awards.

Developed in partnership with residents and representatives from the housing sector Heartwarming Homes supports housing providers to engage and communicate with residents about energy efficiency improvements. It includes advice about how to make energy efficiency an easy choice for residents, a step-by-step communication guide, template letters, a video tour of a retrofitted home, and much more.

The website had over 10,000 visits in the first year and has received excellent feedback from the sector and residents. 94 per cent of housing providers surveyed said the recommendations were practical to implement and residents felt it offered something genuinely different.

A resident said:

“It makes you feel as though you and your home and health matter to your landlord, and they are trying to help you reduce your bills to give you more money in your pocket.”

NHC Chief Executive Tracy Harrison said:

“I’m very proud that this piece of work has been shortlisted for Campaign of the Year. Resident engagement about retrofit consistently comes up as a challenge for members, and this toolkit offers practical advice about how you can improve communication and make sure resident engagement is embedded in your energy efficiency planning. This toolkit is a fantastic example of collaboration, it shows what can be achieved when we work together to address a common problem.”

Placeshapers Chief Executive Catherine Ryder said:

“The Heartwarming Homes toolkit is a great example of co-creation between residents and social housing landlords. When landlords use this toolkit, they can be confident it has been robustly shaped by residents and builds on best practice from across the sector.

“We are delighted it has been shortlisted for this award, but more importantly that the practical advice in the toolkit is being put into practice by landlords across the country, improving the experience of residents when they have retrofit work done on their homes.”

The project was born out of recommendations from the NHC’s Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury and Placeshaper’s and Tpas research Residents’ Voices in the Net Zero Journey about improving communication with residents about retrofit.

The results of the UK Housing Awards will be announced on 26^th November.

Over the weekend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announced a package of housing related funding and policy changes. This included a £500m top-up to the affordable housing programme, consultation on a new rent settlement and changes to the Right to Buy scheme, reducing the discount and allowing councils to keep 100 per cent of receipts.

Northern Housing Consortium Chief Executive Tracy Harrison said:

“The £500m top-up for the Affordable Homes Programme will mean our members can continue building and is something we advocated for strongly in the run-up to the Budget.  A 5-year CPI+1% rent settlement (with a consultation including a ten-year option) will give housing providers more certainty to plan investment. Changes to Right-to-Buy should help stem the loss of social homes.

“These are all great first steps, but there’s lots of work to do to in the run-up to the Spending Review and through the rent consultation. Our members need long-term financial certainty to improve the quality of existing homes, including making them warmer and greener, and to deliver new homes on the scale required to meet government ambitions.

“At the NHC we’ll strongly advocate for investment that supports delivery in the North where regeneration matters, and HMT value-for-money rules (and their narrow interpretation) have too often locked out much needed projects. Deepening devolution, with more local control over funding, will make sure government funds make the biggest possible difference to communities in the North.”

The Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) announcement followed numerous sector reports that the current AHP was close to fully committed. In the run up to the Budget, we made this point to government, including providing data on a number of housing sites where progress had stalled due to funding uncertainty. This announcement will go some way to support affordable housing providers in the North to continue developing, while we await the full details of a post-2026 Affordable Homes Programme in the Spring.

The Chancellor confirmed that social housing rents will be permitted to rise by CPI +1% for five years, with a consultation to launch seeking views on potential alternatives. This consultation will include potentially extending the CPI +1% rent policy to ten years, which has been the policy ask of the NHC and other sector bodies in recent months. Providing greater long-term certainty on future rental income levels will free up additional resources to invest in new and existing homes and is critical to achieving the government’s goals for social housing.

The government also announced changes to the Right to Buy scheme. Firstly, local authorities will now be able to retain 100% of the receipts they receive from any sale through Right to Buy. In addition, it has been confirmed that Right to Buy discounts will be reduced and additional protections on new-build properties will be introduced. It is hoped that these changes will both provide local authorities with greater resources to fund replacement homes following Right to Buy sales, as well as reducing the current disincentive to develop new homes that councils face, as they risk being sold off at a discount shortly after completion.

Overall, this package of changes is a strong first step in addressing some of the most immediate pressures facing the affordable housing sector, and demonstrates that the government is listening. Thank you to our members who provided detailed information to support our case to the Government to help secure much-needed funding. You can read the NHC’s full Budget representation to HM Treasury here.

Watch out for our on-the-day briefing which will cover all the announcements which will impact the housing sector in the North.

The NHC was invited to discuss the Government’s proposed reforms to social housing quality with housing minister Matthew Pennycook MP.

NHC Executive Director, Patrick Murray, attended the roundtable and shared the views of our members on how the sector can work with government to ensure a successful implementation of Awaab’s Law and wider reforms to social housing quality. Patrick also discussed the importance of regeneration, with ageing stock a key issue for northern social landlords.

Patrick was joined by a range of our partners in the sector and the discussion was constructive, with a clear commitment to protecting social housing residents from serious hazards in homes while ensuring that landlords are realistically able to meet the new requirements.

Earlier this year, the NHC submitted a response to the Awaab’s Law consultation on timescales for repairs in the social housing sector. The Government has confirmed it will bring forward legislation for Awaab’s Law in the social rented sector this autumn.