May has been a busy month for conferences! With an enthusiasm to collaborate with our colleagues in the sector to help find solutions to the housing crisis and the existing housing stock, we sent delegates to both CIH Housing Brighton and to UKREIIF in Leeds.

Most delegates we have met agreed that the Government has provided the political context to back the sector by providing capital investment now and in the future with:

• The long-term commitment of £39bn in funding over the 10-year programme and
• The rent convergence increase: from April 2027, this will be £1 per week in addition to CPI+1%, increasing to £2 per week in addition to CPI+1% from April 2028 onwards.

The national strategic priorities behind these commitments are meeting the 1.5m home target and delivering 60% of homes for social rent. The funding is available for new homes, enabling the repurposing of empty properties. Funding will also allow for the acquisition of market homes for affordable housing and for the regeneration of existing housing estates, all of which is a positive start.

Despite this positivity, 99% of delegates we spoke to acknowledged that the 1.5m home target is almost impossible in the life of this parliament and that the sector is struggling with the delivery of new affordable homes.

From our discussions, the main blockers to the provision of new affordable homes include:

• Viability issues, stemming from the wider state of the economy and the housing market
• Development challenges including insufficient infrastructure, the performance of the BSR, its backlog as well as post-planning local challenges
• Financial pressures to prioritise spending on asset and maintenance as a matter of urgency, to deal with regulatory compliance concerns, moving capital away from new construction

It seems that the view from the sector is that policy conditions are maturing to provide the right opportunity for growth, but that the barriers caused by viability and post-planning challenges mean that for development to proceed, it needs to be at optimal scale, speed and risk.

Through discussions with other delegates, it became clear to us that balancing scale, speed and risk will likely be best managed through partnerships and collaboration and that those organisations that work together effectively to manage these factors, will likely be the most successful in the period ahead.

We are working on several of successful joint venture and long-term partnerships which are delivering homes at both scale and over time; you can find out more about these projects and get in touch via our website here.

We will also be attending Housing 2026 in Manchester and the NHF & CIH Housing Summit in Liverpool in September. If you are attending and would like to meet to discuss opportunities, ideas and collaborate with us, please reach out to ma@martinarnold.co.uk.