Embedding localism: Conclusions and recommendations
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5.3 How government should respond With these elements in place on the housing association side, government needs to respond positively by recognising that community activities are part of the core mission for all associations. Part of the debate around the future of housing associations has focused on their ability – or lack of it – to raise significant private funding through ’sweating’ their equity.34 This is hardly surprising. With assets valued at more than £100 billion and legislation now in place enabling them to be registered as ‘for profit’ bodies,35 the Government clearly sees an opportunity for a significant reduction in public funding support whilst also increasing the production of new affordable homes. It would be unfortunate if the drive to cut the national budget deficit resulted in disinvestment in our communities by housing associations, rather than their transformation into places that are more self-reliant and sustainable. ‘Sweating’ assets and delivering localism are not necessarily incompatible, as the Avenue Services experiment seems likely to demonstrate. It is how we make the best use of those public assets and who benefits from ‘sweating’ them that is the key. As ResPublica’s previous report on the future of housing associations pointed out: “Just as government has shown a willingness to step back from a centrally driven model of ownership and control of public services where it can be shown to be better managed and where the accountability for association’s assets can be shown to be clearly focused on communities, government should be willing to hand over responsibility for the stewardship of the assets built up through government investment on behalf of communities. At the centre of this would be the freeing of associations from the constraints around the effective management of their assets and use of historic grant in exchange for a redefining of their relationships with community.”36 Acting on localism in a radical way may mean not only extracting community benefit from publicly funded assets, but going much further, with government encouragement for housing associations to progressively transfer the ownership and management of some of their assets to well-founded and sustainable community-based social enterprises. The medium to long term impact of such approaches will draw in significant additional investment from non-public sources, generating savings to public funds. Given the potential that housing associations have for making these things happen, the Government needs to find new forms of recognition for them and disseminate them widely as good practice which can and should be mainstreamed.
34 Evans, N. (2010) Housing People: Financing housing. London: Policy Exchange. 35 Housing and Regeneration Act (2008). Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2008/17/contents [Accessed 20 August 2012]. 36 Leach, M. and Lupton, M. (2011) At the Crossroads: A progressive future for housing associations. London: ResPublica.