The Housing Corporation changed the name of the Approved Development Programme (ADP) to the National Affordable Housing Programme (NAHP).

 

Size of Programme

The 2006-2008 National Affordable Housing Programme will see the Housing Corporation make £3.9 billion available to fund 84,000 new affordable homes - 49,000 for affordable rent and 35,000 for low cost home ownership.

 

Eligibility of Organisations

The Housing Corporation opened the 2006-2008 bid round to Housing Associations and unregistered bodies.  For this bid round the Housing Corporation sought to fund unregistered bodies through the partnering route.  There needed to be scope for promotion and relegation as organisations moved in and out of partnering status.  The Housing Corporation encouraged organisations that were not able to reach the requirements to achieve partnering status in this bid round to consider their options for joining other organisations.

 

Partnering

In the 2004-06 bid round, the Housing Corporation began allocating Social Housing Grant under the first two-year pilot partner programme.  The partner programme was developed to improve the capacity of the sector to deliver greater added development value and to secure greater long-term efficiencies of scale and procurement.

 

Partnering Programme Route

There were two bidding routes for the 2006-2008 programme, a preferred partner programme route and a specialist programme route.  At least 80% of funding was awarded through the partnering route.

 

Only Housing Associations with satisfactory regulatory and development track records (as confirmed in their published Housing Corporation Assessment) were likely to receive partnering status.  As a minimum, this would mean four green traffic lights for performance as at 31st May 2005.  Unregistered bodies that satisfied the pre-qualification requirement for the £200 million New Partnerships in Affordable Housing Programme could also receive partnering status.

 

It was expected that bids through the partnering route would be for amounts in excess of £20 million or 500 units.  There were occasions, where partners could not achieve this because they operated in geographical areas where these volumes would be difficult to achieve and some regional flexibility was allowed to reflect this.  In these cases, the Housing Corporation did however still expect to achieve substantial efficiency gains through the partnering route.

 

The Housing Corporation announced 81 organisations as preferred development partners for the 2006-2008 programme.  Of the 81 partners, 74 are led by RSLs, either alone or in a consortium, while seven are private developers.

 

The preferred developers were allocated a total of £66.8 million of the pot:

Developer	Allocation (£m)	No. of Homes
Wimpey	£31.7	958
Taylor Woodrow	£11.3	242
Persimmon	£5.8	356
Logic Homes*	£5.3	211
Barratt	£4.4	153
Bellway	£4.9	149
Lovell	£3.4	100

  

 

The Housing Corporation has pledged to attempt to involve more private developers in the next Affordable Housing Programme. The Housing Corporation will also seek feedback to understand why five out of every seven private developers that bid under the 2006/08 round had been unsuccessful.

 

In October 2006, Bellway Homes Limited completed a £8.7 million deal with the Housing Corporation for both the NAPH and NPiAH schemes, to build in total 257 affordable homes in North London, the South-East and South-West.

 

Specialist Programme Route (Previously referred to as the Traditional Programme)

There was two-stage process for this route: bidding and negotiation.  There was no pre-qualification process.  The Housing Corporation expected to spend up to 20% of funding through this route.

 

It was expected that only Housing Associations would bid through the specialist route.  Qualified bidders would be invited to input proposals into the Investment Management System (IMS).  Under the specialist route, bids can be for two years of allocation.  Specialist Programme bidders needed to explain why their projects could not be developed using the collaborating route.

 

£200 million New Partnerships Programme

In parallel to the partnering process, the Housing Corporation brought forward an initial programme to award grant to unregistered bodies alongside Housing Associations.

 

Changes to the Key Worker Programme

In May 2006, the Government announced that it had dropped the restrictions on its Key Worker Living Programme.  All new properties built over the next two years will be available to anyone on council waiting lists.  Previously, only workers that met the key worker definition could qualify for a newly build home.  The move came after recent figures revealed that more than half of all Key Worker Living homes built for sale were still empty.  The lifting of restrictions means that RSLs who submitted bids to build low cost home ownership homes under the Key Worker Living route of the programme can now be sold to existing social housing tenants and those on Council waiting lists as well as key workers.  The lifting of the restrictions applies to all regions covered by the scheme.

 

A Long Term Programme

The Housing Corporation is considering with DCLG (formerly the Office of Deputy Prime Minister) whether pre-allocations should be made, through the partnering route, for the following three years.

 

Proposals for 2008/09 to 2010/11

The Housing Corporation will discuss proposals with bidders, and has invited bidders to register potential schemes with its regional teams.  Any such schemes will need to be entered into IMS, and will require the same level of detail as a bid for the NAHP for 2006/07 and 2007/08.  The Housing Corporation has also introduced bid conditions giving deadline dates for Start on Site of 31st March 2008 and for Practical Completion, a date of 31st March 2011, for all schemes that receive funding through the NAHP 2006/07 and 2007/2008.

 

Schemes entered as a bid with a Start on Site date beyond 31st March 2008, or a Practical Completion date beyond 31st March 2011 will not be considered for funding, from the NAHP 2006/07 and 2007/08, and will be treated as a potential scheme for future years

 

Subject to the outcome of those discussions, the Housing Corporation would issue indicative allocations for the years from 2008/09 onwards on the basis that:

 

The bids meet the same assessment criteria - in terms of fit with regional housing board strategies, quality, value for money and so on - that will be set out for all bids.  This means that bids for 2008/09 onwards will need to be worked up in sufficient detail for the Housing Corporation to make this judgement

 

There is, in addition, a justification for the Housing Corporation to make this indicative allocation at this time.  This may be because the indicative allocation is needed for a strategic project to go ahead.  The partner is, or has the prospects to be, one of the Housing Corporation's best performers, is delivering to a high standard and is making significant progress in the management of their supply chain

 

The Housing Corporation might reassess a pre-allocation that it has made for a number of defined reasons.  For example, it may no longer fit with a regional housing board strategy or the Housing Corporation may have insufficient resources to fund the bid.  A pre-allocation is not a legal commitment.

 

A move to indicative allocations beyond two years would also mean that there is no longer an incentive for bidders to include in their bids schemes, which will not deliver within two years.  The Housing Corporation is reviewing its programme management arrangements to ensure that there are incentives for bidders who deliver to the timeframes set out in their bids, and penalties for those bidders who do not.