Following publication of our joint report "Building Post-Pandemic
Prosperity", ARCH and the National Federation of ALMOs
(NFA) met with senior officials at HM Treasury to make the case for
council housing as part of the post-pandemic recovery.
ARCH Chief Executive John Bibby and Policy Adviser Matthew
Warburton, together with colleagues from the NFA met with the Head
of Social Housing and Head of Housing Economics at the Treasury on
12 February to discuss the findings of our report and the economic,
fiscal, social and health benefits that investment in council
housing would bring to Britain's post-pandemic recovery.
We highlighted the ambition of local authorities to build much
needed social housing and the impact that the lifting of the
Housing Revenue Account borrowing cap has had, as illustrated by
our previous report " Local
Authority new build programmes and the lifting of the HRA borrowing
caps - what is the potential and what are the
constraints?" , which demonstrated
that local authorities were likely to exceed the Treasury estimate
that the lifting of the HRA borrowing cap would enable local
authorities to build 10,000 houses a year and we highlighted the
remaining barriers to enabling councils to build more new
homes.
In particular we drew attention to the need to introduce more
flexibilities in the use of Right to Buy (RTB) Receipts and the
contribution that this could make to council house building
programmes. We pressed officials to expedite the long awaited
response to the consultation on the use of RTB receipts first
published in August 2018 and discussed the contribution
that the introduction of greater flexibilities could make to
increasing the supply of new council housing to help meet the
Government target of building 300,000 new homes of all tenures per
year. In addition, we highlighted the case for change made in our
previous budget submissions and our submission to the Government's
Comprehensive Spending Review.
We stressed that local authorities were facing increased
financial pressures on the Housing Revenue Account for investment
in the existing stock to tackle fire and building safety issues,
the Government's decarbonisation agenda, a potentially higher
Decent Homes Standard and the installation of mandatory fire and
carbon monoxide alarms and that without increased flexibilities in
the use of RTB receipts new build programmes would inevitably have
to be curtailed to meet these growing commitments.
As expected, in the run up to the Chancellor's Budget on 3 March
we received no assurances from Treasury officials and wait to see
whether the Government will make any relevant policy announcements
in or alongside the Budget statement.