Irwell Valley Chair blogs about resilience and innovation
15 April 2025
I didn’t expect a housing association would own a football stadium.
Know thyself! - is the phrase that came to mind as I reflected on the recent Placeshapers Chairs' Network meeting.
The network is a unique space where chairs of member organisations came together to support and inspire each other.
Each meeting has an influential external speaker and a member-led session. This time we heard from Will Perry, Director of Strategy at the Regulator of Social Housing and Francis Burrows, chair of The Pioneer Group.
As Will talked it reminded me that boards face tougher choices making it important that we know our organisations, our homes, customers and colleagues. We need to understand and manage our risks and use our vision and values to guide us through trade-offs and decision making. The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) will be looking at how boards have taken decisions and how they manage risk.
We face challenges, including previous rent caps, interest rates, and building cost inflation, ageing housing stock and rising demand. We have increased investment in existing homes on repairs, planned maintenance and energy efficiency improvements. Some associations also face significant expenditure on building safety remediation, with social housing tenants unable to access to the government’s building safety fund.
Will Perry, Director of Strategy at the RSH, a man who likes his graphs, shared sector insights from the RSH 2024 Global Accounts. I would recommend all board members read this on a rainy day, and consider in the context of their own organisation.
The graphs visualise what we know; that the sector continues to face significant financial pressures, with interest cover reducing, successive projected increases built into business plans that have not been achieved and this is expected to continue over the next 5 years. My key takeaways are:
- Associations spent a record £8.8bn on repairs and maintenance, 13% (£1bn) more compared to the previous year and 55% (£3.1bn) above the pre-pandemic level of £5.7bn reported in 2020.
- To protect their organisations, many associations associations have pulled back on development. This is in the middle of a housing crisis, when the government wants us to - and we want to - support ambitions to build 1.5m homes, contributing to economic growth.
- On a positive note, development capacity and ambitions do vary, based on the size and type of association concerned and their financial profile. There was a 10% increase in development for the year, with £13.7bn reported in 2023 surpassing the pre-pandemic peak. 54,000 new social homes were delivered, a 3% increase on the previous year. However, this is expected to be the high point and based on the analysis of quarterly returns will decrease in future years.
- The RSH will continue to focus on Value for Money and expects all organisations to challenge themselves on whether they are as efficient as they possibly can be within their own context.
The government clearly see building new homes as one way to achieve economic growth and to this end it was positive that government committed a further £2bn in the Spring Statement as a down payment from the Treasury, ahead of more long-term investment in social and affordable housing in the Spending Review later this year. PlaceShapers' submission sets out the role that housing associations are keen to play – and how we can do more with government support.
As Chair of Irwell Valley, a housing association investing in Greater Manchester's regeneration, it warmed my heart to hear from Francis Burrows, Chair of The Pioneer Group about their dedication to and investment in the Castle Vale community in Birmingham. It was insightful to hear why and how the board considered and made the decision and manage the risks associated with this diversification, which include an exit strategy, recruiting the right team and accessing external funding to improve the facilities. The stadium now makes a profit and serves as a community asset, attracting people into the area. Their approach to place making includes providing homes and working with residents and other partners to provide essential support services, like youth programmes, family support, health initiatives, and employment services.
The importance of a strong customer voice was a recurring theme. Both Will and Francis emphasised the need for associations to understand their homes and listen to their customers. The Pioneer Group’s decision to advance their window replacement programme based on customer feedback that they were cold in their homes is an example of how listening to tenants can drive impactful changes.
In these tough times, it’s heartening to see the resilience and innovation in our sector.