Articles

A new financial borrowing vehicle created by housing associations for housing associations has funded 2,233 new homes across England and Wales in the last year according to its Social Impact Reportreleased today (6 February 2020).
 
MORhomes, owned and created by housing associations, lent its first nine borrowers a total of £260m which is being used to fund new homes in 36 local authorities in England and Wales. The homes are for a range of tenures including 1,206 for social and affordable rent, 536 for shared ownership and 31 designed for people with support needs to be more independent.

Golding Homes, one of the South East’s largest housing providers, aims to build more new affordable homes in Kent as part of its development pipeline, with the goal to have 8,000 homes in its ownership by 2021. 
 
Based in Maidstone, the housing provider has set out ambitious plans thanks to a new £100m credit facility secured with NatWest and additional funding of £20m from Santander. 
 
Golding Homes owns and manages over 7,650 homes in Kent and provides services to more than 20,000 people. The additional credit funding has already played an important part in Golding’s latest development plan, with the organisation recently entering into contract with three major UK developers to provide 164 homes across five new housing schemes.

Housing Association Magazine Editor Joe Bradbury takes a sneak peak at the social housing wishlist for 2020. What resolutions should we be making as a sector?

From Greta Thunberg travelling by boat to New York from Portsmouth, to the Amazon rainforest disaster, climate change continues to be a dominating theme in today’s society; with each controversy underlined by the threat of rising carbon emissions. 

While the spotlight is often shone brightest on transport, meat and the rising population, one of the biggest culprits of carbon emissions is spoken about less - the building sector. Almost half of all emissions in the UK are linked to construction, operation and maintenance of the built environment.

It’s not just the onsite building process, but there’s a huge correlation between the extraction and consumption of materials for the use of building materials, and their environmental impact. For example, billions of tonnes of sand and gravel are extracted per year to make concrete for the building industry, affecting beaches and river beds.

Housing Association Magazine Editor Joe Bradbury takes a sneak peek at the social housing Santa list. Excitable Edgar aside, what do we want for Christmas as a sector?

It’s understandable that many are struggling to feel jolly as another year is added to the number of years of failure in housing policy. The once common concept of home ownership is now an impossible dream for many, and untold numbers of people are being pushed into homelessness.

The catastrophic decline in social housing has left millions feeling insecure in unaffordable homes they’ll never own. Unless we take action, the future of man will be a generation of young families that are, at best, trapped renting privately for their whole lives, with billions in welfare costs being paid to private landlords. Bah humbug!

Social housing provider Stonewater has been named Legal & General Affordable Homes’ (“Legal & General”) largest management partner. Stonewater is supporting the organisation in delivering its ambitious development plan of building 3,000 homes by 2022, by leading on Legal & General’s housing operations across England.

The not-for-profit organisation is one of 14 housing organisations appointed as management partners to Legal & General. Stonewater is first expected to take over the management of 300 homes across England – in areas like Worcestershire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire  – between now and March 2020, with another 700 to follow.

Current construction methods are so wasteful we must effect change. Housing Association Magazine Editor Joe Bradbury looks at ways in which social housing can lead the way to more sustainable construction.
At a recent event at Mitsubishi Electric’s Hatfield headquarters, just shy of 200 specifiers, architects, Housing Associations, housebuilders and heating engineers gathered to hear a passionate presentation from architect and TV presenter, George Clarke where he called on the housing sector to radically transform the way we build homes.