Affordable Homes Programme: five minutes with Richard Hill

This week we announced the outcome of the response to our Affordable Homes Programme (AHP), and the successful Providers who will be receiving allocations from us over this four year Spending Period.

We spoke to Richard Hill, our Executive Director for Programmes and Deputy Chief Executive, about what this means for partners and our work to meet the Government’s housing target over the next four years.

You must be pleased with the response to the AHP?
Yes, absolutely, it shows the appetite among our partners to deliver. Credit must surely go to them for rising to the challenge. Working closely with them, through local negotiation, we have developed a programme that over the next four years will deliver 80,000 new affordable homes for rent and sale that fit with local priorities and achieve excellent value for money. This is great result for communities.

How does this fit with the Government’s housing target?
This puts us on track to exceed the Government’s early ambitions for creating new housing. The original aim of the AHP was to help meet the ambition of 150,000 new affordable homes by 2015, but on the basis of the programme we have negotiated, Government now anticipates that up to 170,000 will be delivered during that period.

How many of these homes are new supply and how many are conversions (to Affordable Rent)?
All 80,000 new homes are new supply, and in delivering them, Providers have also proposed converting 82,000 of their existing homes to Affordable Rent, though this will vary through the contracting process.

Overall this equates to just under 20% of their social rented re-lets to Affordable Rent. There are just over 2m socially rented homes in England so the level of conversions over the next four years represents 4%, and the vast majority of re-lets will be offered at social rents.

What proportion of homes will be for supported housing, rural housing, and larger homes?
Overall, around 9.5% of the Affordable Rent homes are proposed to be supported housing, while around 9% of the programme outside London is proposed to be rural housing. 29.1% of delivery of the programme is proposed to be larger family-sized homes (three-beds and above).

Obviously, as providers enter into contracts it will become clearer how this translates into delivery in local areas as each one has different priorities.

What about Empty Homes, Homelessness Change and Traveller Pitch funding?
These are all being assessed separately because of their specialist nature, and the outcome will be announced in the autumn.

What is the split of homes by HCA Operating Area?
We have achieved a good geographic spread of delivery:

• 18% in the East and South East
• 27% in London
• 17% in the Midlands
• 10% in North East Yorkshire and The Humber
• 12% in North West
• 16% in South and South West.
   

What’s been the role of the TSA?
The TSA viewed all initial offers and made recommendations to us on each provider’s viability.  This also applied to all revised offers following negotiation.

This role is as set out in the Framework document and is designed to ensure that providers are in compliance with the TSA’s standards around Governance and Viability, and that they should remain so while developing under the AHP.

How will Local Authorities influence delivery in their areas?
Local Authorities have played, and will continue to play, a key role in the process. Providers have already engaged with them prior to submitting their offers and we have sought confirmation of Local Authority support, and feedback from them, for all new supply proposals where specific sites are identified. These discussions will be ongoing as indicative proposals become firm, and the programme moves forward.

So what happens next?
We have contacted all providers who submitted offers informing them of the outcome of their offers. It’s now up to our local delivery teams to agree the detailed breakdown of homes and funding with providers and sign them up to contracts. In cases where provider offers have been scaled back through the negotiation process, they may need some time to agree an appropriate programme with their HCA Lead Negotiator.

When will we know where the homes will be provided?
Once all of the contracts are signed we will know how many homes each provider proposes to deliver. This may still be subject to some change as the programme is delivered over the next four years.

For more information visit our Affordable Homes Programme web page.

Read our full response to the Government announcement.

Read the Written Ministerial Statement here.