I attended a Treasury meeting today called by the Chief Secretary of the Treasury Danny Alexander to discuss Affordable Housing before the Spending Round is published on the 26th of June.
I thought this was very positive on a number of levels, firstly because the Minister actually seemed to be engaged, listening and interested in what the people around the the table had to say, and secondly because he seemed receptive to the additional benefit housing can bring as a driver for economic growth beyond the construction multiplier. We have done
work on this with Sheffield Hallam University and the findings on growth and jobs from this were reiterated from other work carried out across the country.
The minister was concerned about the large variation in operating costs for housing providers and while the points were well made round the room that this varies because of the wealth of differing provision I expect this will be something to which he returns.
He was obviously well aware of the impact of welfare reform though, as might have been expected, had little to say on this. The critical issue was of course economic growth and what might be done to drive it. A number of people talked about the need to be more creative and flexible in responding to that challenge and I was able to point to the work we and others have done on
Housing Enterprise Zones and a localised approach to revenue support, of which there will be further detail on our website shortly. Though it was surprising to realise that the Treasury was unaware of the possible impact of the consultation paper from the regulator on the sector's ability to cross subsidise to drive growth and housing delivery, and I expect he will be finding out more on this!
Our submission to HMT will take these arguments forward and we wait with anticipation the spending round!