星空传媒

Government should ditch its manifesto pledge to build 1.5m homes by the end of the parliament and instead focus on building up capacity and skills to deliver over a longer time period, an influential affordable housing sector leader has said.

Nick Atkin, chief executive of Yorkshire Housing, pointed out there is a tension between the 10-year Affordable Homes Programme (AHOP) announced in the spending review and its manifesto pledge to ramp up delivery over the next four years.

鈥淭he government needs to rethink what its success measure is, move away from the 1.5 million homes in the lifetime of this parliament and instead talk about the number of homes across each tenure that it鈥檚 going to deliver over the 10-year programme that they鈥檝e announced,鈥� he said.

鈥淥therwise you鈥檙e going to artificially skew the programme. And if you try and do too much in that early period, you鈥檙e going to create massive cost inflation because skills and the supply chain aren鈥檛 fully developed.鈥�

Atkin, speaking to 星空传媒鈥檚 sister title Housing Today, said he would expect the 拢39bn to be profiled in such a way that more grant funding is spent in the latter years of the 10-year programme, due to the need to increase capacity and skills.

鈥淵ou鈥檙e not going to get that from day one. And if the prospectus isn鈥檛 coming out from Homes England until the winter, in effect, we鈥檙e not going to be able to start submitting bids until at least the back end of this year鈥�, he said.

鈥淪o you won鈥檛 get that clarity [about bids] until probably April. So we will have lost, in effect, two years of this parliamentary term.鈥�

He said the 10-year AHP gives the government an opportunity to reset the target rather than pushing ahead with a plan to build 1.5m homes in effectively three years.

He said: 鈥淲hen a party gets into government, sometimes the reality of what is deliverable within some of the timeframes needs to be reset. The success measure needs to not be an arbitrary figure that was in the manifesto. It needs to be a well-considered, well thought-out figure over the 10-year lifetime of an investment programme.鈥�

Atkin, who is also vice-chair of the West Yorkshire Housing Partnership, said however that the spending review provided 鈥榩retty much everything鈥� the sector asked for.

Alongside the 拢39bn AHP, Reeves announced a consultation on rent convergence, a 10-year above inflation rent settlement and equal access to building safety funding for social landlords.

鈥淚 think it genuinely is a once in a generation opportunity for us now to tackle some of the issues we鈥檝e been talking about for years, I personally can鈥檛 remember this level of investment in housing at any point in my 30 plus years career.鈥�

Before the spending review ,Atkin had been active in leading calls by a group of seven social landlord partnerships for housing to be reclassified as national infrastructure in order to more easily attract long-term investment. The government did not do this, but Atkin said the 10-year programme will provide a similar outcome.

鈥�I think that鈥檚 that we鈥檝e got to see that as a major step forward. In my eyes, committing to a 10 year AHP effectively treats housing investment like infrastructure鈥�, he said.