The housing corporation is to scrutinise the ability of inidividual housing associations to build the thousands of new homes required by the Communities Plan.
This will be done before any of the corporation's anticipated £1.5bn funding for 2004/05 is distributed in the next investment round in the spring – this will be based around the spending priorities recently submitted by the nine regional housing boards.

A panel of experts from 15 organisations will oversee the corporation's revamped investment policy, aimed at securing more housing for the funding received by associations.

Members at the inaugural meeting last month included the Chartered Institute of Housing, National Housing Federation, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Local Government Association. A number of housing associations also attended.

Fiona Cruickshank, corporation director of investment policy, said: "We floated preliminary proposals around how we intend to deliver the number of homes John Prescott has planned. As part of this we will be checking RSLs have the development capacity to deliver what they say they can. We still have to decide precisely what assessment criteria will be used, but this will include the number of homes that an association proposes to build and how much this will cost."

The corporation will run two parallel investment programmes in 2004/05: one for individual schemes, the other a series of partnering deals between the corporation and a limited number of associations to build a string of projects. The latter will also receive funding for two years rather than one.

NHF policy officer Neil Griffiths said: "As long as any assessment of associations' ability to deliver is open, transparent and objective, then it will ultimately achieve the type of sustainable communities that the government desires."

Source

Housing Today