HFi Today, Who's Who in Local Authority Housing Development - The HFi's Winners

- Who's Who in Local Authority Housing Development - The HFi's Winners

- The HFi Meets...

- Focus: Jaywick Sands

- Latest Housing News

- Autumn Budget Special - 29 November

Who's Who in Local Authority Housing Development - The HFi's Winners

Inside Housing have launched this year's 'Who's Who in Local Authority Housing Development List' and the HFi is pleased to showcase the winners we are involved with. We are delighted that not only was Sir Steve Bullock from the HFi team recognised, but also, Gavin Jones, Chief Executive of HFi member Essex County Council, and some of our Housing Business Ready Councils.

Sir Steve has stood as a vocal champion of council housing for London, and is set to retire next May.

He has been Mayor of Lewisham since 2002, executive member for housing at London Councils since 2010, and sits on Sadiq Khan's Homes for Londoners board, as well as the Housing and Finance Institute. During his time at Lewisham, he has seen the authority establish an ALMO and Phoenix Community Housing, a community gateway housing association. The authority was also an early adopter of the now well-established system of building units for market sale to subsidise continued building of traditional council homes.

Sir Steve names the opening of Place/Ladywell, the UK's first "pop-up village" for homeless families, as his proudest housing achievement.

Housing Business Ready Councils:

• Gerry Clarkson - Leader, Ashford Borough Council 
• Tracey Kerly - Chief Executive, Ashford Borough Council
• Lorraine Mealings - Head of Housing and Customer Services, and Deputy Director of Housing, Bournemouth Borough Council
• Bill Flood - Managing Director, Wokingham Housing
• Carl Brazier - Director of Housing and Customer Services, Stoke-on-Trent City Council
• Steve Packham - Chief Executive, Chelmsford City Council
• Ian Fitzpatrick - Director of Service Delivery, Lewes District Council and Eastbourne Borough Council, and Managing Director of Eastbourne Homes

Click here to see the list in full.

The HFi Meets...

Recently, the HFi's Lord Kerslake and Natalie Elphicke paid a visit to modular housing manufacturer ENE Group in Medway. These are new state of the art homes and helping to meet the demand for new homes in the area. In a bid to speed up the building of houses, Medway Council is backing plans to create more kit houses in the community.

In January this year, Medway council gave the green light to this development of ready-made pod homes, and they are now becoming a reality. Three pods of 15 homes will land on site from Scotland and will be 85% complete, with only the roof being added on site.

Once finished, the development will comprise of 15 homes, and will be on sale from £185,000 for a one bed apartment, to £330,000 for a three bed semi detached house with a garage.

This type of house construction is 40% quicker than traditional methods, and from the day a pod arrives on site it can be ready to welcome its new residents within four weeks. And they come with a 60 year warranty.

Our Chairman, Sir Mark Boleat has also recently met Tony Pidgley CBE, founder and Chairman of Berkeley Group. They discussed Sir Mark's recent paper for the HFi on 'The Housing Problem in London' as well as housing infrastructure.

Sir Mark will also be discussing his recent report - 'The Housing Problem in London' - for the London Planning and Development Forum on 11 December. As well as speaking at the Winmark Affordable Housing Network on 27 November.

Focus: Jaywick Sands

Also last week, Inside Housing wrote an excellent 'insight' piece about Jaywick Sands and the deprivation that has occurred there. In the article, the HFi's work in Jaywick and our report 'Turning the Tide' was quoted extensively.

It highlighted our identification of a "toxic trio" of deprivation drivers common to coastal areas: an abnormally high proportion of rented housing, the low quality of those rentals and poor employment prospects. And our recommendation of housing-led measures to speed up the renewal of such places, including introducing a new "fair rents" regime.

Inside Housing also set out our recommendations for structural changes to build a faster, stronger, new coastal renaissance to reverse entrenched deprivation within years rather than decades. These include a one-stop shop for housing renewal powers, streamlining the process whereby local authorities take action against poor quality homes. This would be cheaper and more effective for councils to lead change with a one-stop shop for housing market renewal rather than the current hotchpotch of powers.

You can read the article in full here.

Latest Housing News

• Annual housing supply in England amounted to 217,350 net additional dwellings in 2016-17, up 15% on 2015-16.
• The 217,350 net additions in 2016-17 resulted from 183,570 new build homes, 37,190 gains from change of use between non-domestic and residential, 5,680 from conversions between houses and flats and 720 other gains (caravans, house boats etc.), offset by 9,820 demolitions.
• 18,887 of the net additions from change of use were through 'permitted development rights' (full planning permission not required). These comprised 17,751 additional dwellings from former offices, 330 from agricultural or forestry buildings, 106 from storage buildings and 700 from other non-domestic buildings. 
• In 2016-17, the 183,570 new build completions accounted for 84% of the net change. 'Change of use' is the second largest component with a gain of 37,190 dwellings (17% of the net change). Conversions added 5,680 dwellings (3% of the net change) and there were a further 720 other gains (0.3% of the net change). Demolitions resulted in a loss of 9,820 dwellings (-5% of the net change).

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