Building New, Affordable, Sustainable Social Housing for the Future

SCALA

Jane Briginshaw

October 2012

Contents

Current delivery context

HCA purpose and vision

Building homes for the long term

Design research and delivery

Current delivery context

Limited public funding

HCA investment is focused on 4 key areas:

• Affordable housing

• Renewal of existing social housing stock

• Land and regeneration

• Economic Assets Programme

Focus on growth

The HCA roleWe are the people who help get things done…

Working with people and places to enable them to deliver homes, economic growth and jobs

Delivering programmes of investment

Making best use of our land and that of government/ other public bodies

Undertaking robust economic regulation of social housing providers

HCA Purpose: to contribute to economic growth by helping communities to realise their aspirations for prosperity and to deliver quality housing that people can afford

The Challenge: Building Homes for the long term2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme The HCA’s existing Design and Quality Standards

http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/ourwork/design-and-sustainability-standards are to be used for the setting Code for Sustainable Homes level 3 as the minimum standard on all grant funded schemes.

Land disposals and Economic assets New disposals are set at local authority standards

Local Authorities developing their own standards- Supported by HCA

September announcements First Buy, Empty Homes, Guarantees, Section 106

pilots

The current context

National government context

•Government-led, high profile review to be announced today to report Spring 2012

‘a fundamental and urgent review led by Government working with interested parties to rationalise these standards. This review will result in a clear plan of action by next spring’ (September 2012)’• Standards review group• Contestable Policymaking Challenge

Panel

The current context

National government context

•The new Growth and Infrastructure Bill to ‘help the country compete on the global

stage by setting out a comprehensive series of practical reforms to reduce confusing and overlapping red tape’ October 18th

• ‘Getting building going on stalled housing sites, by allowing the reconsideration of economically unviable 'Section 106' agreements. This could release some of the 75,000 affordable and private homes currently stalled. Unrealistic conditions currently mean no development, no regeneration and no community benefits’

Evidence from our customers2008-11 NAHP

Evidence published at http://www.homesandcommunities.co.uk/quality-counts

We reviewed 520 schemes and interviewed 973 residents

Residents were overwhelmingly positive. The vast majority (93%) when asked “Overall, how satisfied are you with your home” gave a rating of four or five.

In answer to “Do you like your home and do you feel comfortable there” the average score was 4.59

“We love it” “It’s like heaven” “Beautiful house, perfect” “Comfortable and secure” “Couldn’t be happier”

Design Research and Delivery

Evidence from our customers

Long term programmes- learning the lessons

In depth technical research and sharing good practice

Learning the Lessons

Design for Manufacture began in 2005, several phases with same brief allowed lessons to be learned and improvements made

Detailed evaluations carried out post occupation to assess technical performance and what residents thought

Current phase on site, adapts to economic climate. High quality-space and CSH 4 affordable, very popular

The Carbon Challenge

Learning from large scale delivery of high performance homes CSH3

Supporting government to understand challenges involved in delivery of 2016 zero carbon standard at higher Code levels

Focus on detailed aspects such as fabric first to build industry capacity

Conclusions

HCA’s work with local partners key to delivering Government’s objectives on localism, growth and regulation

Through our investment we can influence design and sustainability and help spread good practice

homesandcommunities.co.uk

/HCA_UK

/homes-&-communities-agency