Balancing Housing Revenue Accounts, tackling homelessness and ill health, addressing the needs of vulnerable people, realising house-building targets and dealing with the impact of COVID-19 – the issues facing local authorities as a result of the UK's housing crisis are complex and interwoven
In 2020, thousands of families are living in converted shipping containers, ex-office blocks or one-bedroom flats. According to CIPFA's own analysis, it will take 17 years to build enough properties to rehome the 1.2 million people currently on local authority housing lists unless something changes (this, and more, is taken from a CIPFA-generated national housing briefing, PDF, 322 KB, and regional housing briefing, PDF, 343 KB).
Government ambitions to build more affordable housing have turned the spotlight back onto local authorities. Increasingly, they are seen as part of the solution for tackling homelessness in their communities and borrowing caps, which had constrained councils' ability to act, have been removed. But whilst such developments are welcome they raise a number of associated issues for councils, including:
- balancing their HRA
- acquiring lost skills
- managing the housing needs for a growing cohort of vulnerable people.
In addition, the impact of housing fraud should not be overlooked, as well as growing repair bills due to the impact of weather and climate change which are are in addition to standard repairs and dilapidations.
How CIPFA can help you
CIPFA's unique position in local government finance, together with our public sector property and local authority housing expertise, means we can work with you to join the dots. We can you help you connect finance, planning, delivery and management and help ensure that your local authority achieves the best outcomes for your communities. At this unprecedented time, this has never been so important.
CIPFA's services include our professional network for ongoing support and best practice case studies, housing publications for local government, and our TIS housing knowledge stream. At a difficult time CIPFA can work with you to help achieve financial resilience and minimise risk – as well as improve housing outcomes and contribute to social value.
Contact us
To discuss how we can help you address the issues within your housing offering please contact us.
Nina Johansson, Senior Business Development Manager, CIPFA
Email: nina.johansson@cipfa.org
Tel: 020 7 543 5600