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Developing practical actions to address regional housing challenges
Read time: 3 mins Added date: 13/08/2024
As part of the series of articles reflecting on insights shared in the Lloyds Bank Pavilion at UKREiiF, we focus on one of the biggest issues the UK is facing – addressing the serious shortage of quality, affordable homes.
Around 1.5 million households are on the waiting list for a social home, but less than 10,000 new social homes were built last year. 145,000 children are going ‘home’ to temporary accommodation each night and this figure has risen by 15 per cent in a year.
Our Head of Real Estate and Housing, Nicola Haigh, chaired a session to discuss the scale of the problem these figures highlight and practical ways to tackle issues in the housing sector, and was joined by:
- Elyn Corfield – Business & Commercial Banking CEO at Lloyds Bank
- Nuala Gallagher – Corporate Director of City Development at Liverpool City Council
- Gerry Hughes – Managing Director at Placemaking and Built Environment Partner at Gerry Hughes Consulting
The panellists assessed the possible solutions to scaling up delivery of social homes, including where local authorities are beginning to make a difference, the public-private partnership model they’re embracing and the role banks have to play in building more homes.
Pockets of excellence
A large proportion of homes in Liverpool are being rented. Addressing this balance to swing back in favour of more homes to own is something the City Council’s working hard to achieve.
The city has the ingredients it needs to fuel housebuilding: strong transport infrastructure with plenty of capacity, and a swathe of brownfield sites ready to be redeveloped. It’s identified that it doesn’t have the financial or staffing resources to deliver a project, but it does have the capacity to offer its insight and shape the model needed to bring more affordable homes to fruition.
In Liverpool, the Combined Authority, six local authorities and Homes England have formed a Strategic Place Partnership. Collectively, the organisations are taking a holistic approach to addressing the housing shortage in Liverpool, aiming to develop a deep understanding of what’s causing their housing issues.
One example of those challenges has been the viability of sites and delays in the planning system. The partnership approach being taken in Liverpool mitigates those risks because it brings the private sector in early.
This improves outcomes because skilled developers and housebuilders can identify and solve issues with land viability sooner, and agreeing a plan and approach well in advance means there aren’t any last-minute disagreements when time and resource has gone into planning a scheme.
Funding the future
Collaborative thinking like this and working towards a long-term strategy is something that Elyn Corfield said Lloyds Bank is championing.
She added: “Solutions go beyond finance and into adopting full-system thinking. We need a strategic approach to tackle a systemic problem, and that requires deep thought about how to find more creative solutions.”
“Building cross-sector partnerships is key to success and it is why Lloyds Bank has partnered with Crisis to call for one million new genuinely affordable homes to be delivered over the next decade,” she continued.
And to bolster that commitment, Elyn announced that Lloyds Bank is going to double the amount it lends to small social & affordable housing providers to inject the capital and support the industry needs to get spades in the ground.
It’s essential that workers who are driving growth across the economy can return to a safe, good quality home at night. Britain’s builders need to be empowered to deliver this at the pace and scale required if we’re to remedy the stark statistics highlighted on the panel.
Ultimately, building new quality homes is what will help us achieve our aim of helping Britain prosper.
Find out more about our commitment to support the social housing sector (PDF, 2.7MB).