HPA’s Director Richard Wooldridge Represents RIBA NW at Labour Party Conference Debate On Delivering Quality Affordable Homes

Representing RIBA North West at the Labour Party Conference on 23rd September 2024 to participate in a debate on the challenges of delivering quality affordable housing , HPA Director & Architect Richard Wooldridge tells us more about this complicated issue:

“I was invited to attend one of the fringe events at the Labour Party Conference as part of my role as the RIBA North-West Regional Chair. The topic for the round-table discussion, hosted by the RIBA and Peabody Trust, was ‘Delivering High Quality Affordable Homes’. The event featured panelists such as Jennifer Dixon (representing the RIBA), John Lewis (The Peabody Trust), Rachel Blake MP and Dr Abby O’Connor. The event drew a large audience of delegates from all parts of the construction industry and the conference room at RIBA North was full to capacity, which was impressive for a very wet autumnal Monday morning in Liverpool!

The issue of the delivery of affordable housing is a complicated matter. There is an acute shortage of affordable housing across the country, and delivery has slowed down in recent years; which is particularly the case in the area where I am based. I was therefore keen to find out at the Labour Conference how the policy-makers are planning to solve the problem.

Our practice, HPA Architects, has a long history of delivering high-quality affordable housing in Lancashire and Cumbria for various Registered Providers and Housing Associations. One of our most recent social housing projects won an LABC Award for ‘The Best Social / Affordable New Housing Development in 2020’ in the North-West Region. This was a development for 8 affordable homes in Warton, Lancashire which were built by Wilson Properties for the Guinness Partnership. However, since 2020 we’ve only completed another 3 affordable homes in the area. It was interesting to learn at the conference that delivery of affordable homes was a problem all over the country including some of the most affluent boroughs in London.

The problem in our area, and many other parts of the country, is economics. The most commonly used funding model for the delivery of affordable housing is to use the profit from the sales of open market housing to cross subsidise the delivery of social housing elsewhere on the same site. This works well when there is a significant profit being made from the delivery of the open market housing on the development. However, in certain circumstances there isn’t a significant profit being made due to a combination of higher than normal build costs or low local sales values (or a combination of the two). When you are trying to regenerate a contaminated brownfield site in an area where house prices are low; the economics often don’t stack up and affordable element of the scheme is either reduced or completely removed on the grounds of viability.

Many of the affordable projects we’re involved in have been on land which has had some expensive technical issue which needs resolution (often land requiring remediation); and as house values in our area (the north-west) are not as high as in other parts of the country, we often find that developments have viability issues.

So, from our experience the current model for using the profit from open-market plots on developments doesn’t work. It’s hard to see the situation improving either, as there is increasing pressure for developments to contribute to significant infrastructure improvement costs, and also some of the best located sites which would benefit from regeneration are former industrial sites requiring expensive remediation.

The issue is therefore complicated and multi-faceted, and we’re still waiting to hear what the new government’s plans are to increase delivery of affordable housing. A few of the key areas for action were discussed during the event:

• Better planning policy to promote the delivery of housing. The government have just issued a draft copy of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) for consultation, which contains a significant increase in housing targets for in most parts of the country.
• Better collaboration between all members of the construction team and particularly between Architects and the local planning authority.
• Investment in the planning system: The government have previously announced that they intend to recruit 300 new planning officers ‘to get Britain building again’, but RTPI figures suggest that this will only replace a tenth of Planning Officers who left Local Authority posts during the previous 10 years.  This figure also works out at less than one new Planner per each Authority, so it’s a step in the right direction, but it’s not going to be a game-changer. There was also talk of a ‘southern bias’ in terms of Planning Skills within local authorities, and the need to provide more specialist skills across the country and empower local authorities to deliver these new homes.
• There were calls for more central funding for affordable housing and cross subsidization from affluent to less affluent parts of the country, which would certainly assist the situation in the areas where my practice works.
• There was unanimous support to retrofitting old buildings to create new homes.
• Rachel Blake MP said that the government were keen to provide stability in the sector in order to provide confidence for Local Authorities and Registered Providers.
• There was talk about improving skills throughout the whole sector.
• It was also pointed out that a lot needs to be done to upgrade existing affordable housing, some of which is in a poor state. Worrying, there still seems to be little incentivization to retrofit at the moment; and one of the contributors reiterated a popular wish within the construction industry for VAT to be removed on retrofit projects.

On the whole, the event was very informative, but it did expose the complexity of increasing housing delivery; particularly in less affluent parts of the country. However, we can’t escape the fact that the delivery of affordable housing will only increase significantly if there is more funding from central government, which is a big ask when there are so many pressures in all sectors of the economy. However, as history shows, mass building of social houses has only been possible when there has been significant funding and momentum from the government, and an injection of funding into the sector will undoubtedly create jobs and increase skills across the construction sector; as well as delivering new, sustainable low-carbon housing fit for future generations.”

For more information on this RIBA event click here