Housing Corporation also exceeded most of its build targets, says annual report
The number of troubled housing associations put into supervision by the regulator has dropped by more than 80% in four years, the Housing Corporation’s annual report said.
The Corporation put 25 housing associations into supervision in 2003/4 compared with four in 2007/8.
The 2007/8 annual report said the drop was caused by the Corporation’s move to encouraging housing associations to regulate themselves and targeting intervention at the most complex cases.
The figures came out as the inquiry into the Corporation’s handling of Ujima, the first housing association to become insolvent, said it should have intervened earlier in the face of mounting evidence that the association was in trouble. In response the Corporation announced a series of changes to the way it manages regulation. Aman Dalvi, chief executive of Ujima until 2002, said the Corporation was now seen as "more interventionist" that it had been in the past.
But the annual report also showed the corporation exceeded many of its development targets in its final year in existence. It will be replaced by a new regulator, the Tenant Services Authority, in December.
The Corporation exceeded its targets for the numbers of homes funded in every region except London, where it hit 95% of its affordable rented homes target and 78% of its goal for low-cost homeownership properties. In Yorkshire and the Humber it funded three-and-a-half times more shared-ownership properties than its target and 27% more homes for affordable rent than its goal.
But it missed its target of 4,300 completions under the key worker living programme for public sector workers by 1,129. Only the East of England hit its target for that programme with the South-east achieving 80% and London only 69%. Previously the government had reduced the target for the key worker living scheme because a part of the scheme, Open Market HomeBuy which provides equity loans to help people buy their home on the open market, was proving less popular than envisaged.
