Southern posted just £3m in sales income in first half of the year
Contractor failures are being blamed for a housing association’s fall in sales income.
Southern Housing, which merged with Optivo last year, reported open market sales income of just £3m in the first half of the financial year in an update today.
This suggests the figure for 2023/24 is likely to be a lot lower than the £67m generated for the last financial year as a whole.
The 78,000-home association its results have been impacted by “some building contractors struggling to deliver schemes on time and to budget, and others going into administration, all resulting in reduced rental and net sales income”.
It said it will monitor second half performance closely but may need to “recognise some additional impairments on development programmes in 2023/24”.
The association completed 213 homes in the six months to 30 September, compared to more than 1,000 completions in the whole of 2022/23. It started work on 216 homes in the half-year.
Southern announced in September plans to cut its new build programme to just 250 homes a year for four years “in the face of economic challenges” and to focus instead on improving existing homes.
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