Northern Irish housing bodies welcome extra £24m for social housing, but warn ‘significant gap’ remains

The Northern Ireland Executive has allocated an extra £24m in funding for social housing, to help enable the delivery of 1,400 homes in the current financial year.

In its autumn monitoring, the executive committed to investing £68m of capital funding in social housing, infrastructure and tackling rural poverty and social isolation.

It also announced £39.6m to tackle wastewater constraints impacting construction.

The executive was allocated an additional £124m by Westminster in the autumn Budget, bringing the total Barnett consequentials from the chancellor’s announcement to £640m.

Justin Cartwright, national director of the Chartered Institute of Housing Northern Ireland, called the extra £24m for social housing “a positive step” towards tackling Northern Ireland’s housing crisis. He said the announcements highlighted the executive’s commitment to investing in social housing and essential water infrastructure.

Cartwright added that “It is crucial to recognise that water infrastructure underpins development of all housing tenures and more, making it a vital investment for the future.”

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In August, CIH Northern Ireland sent a letter to John O’Dowd, the minister for infrastructure, pointing out that current investment constraints are preventing NI Water, the national water and sewerage service, from delivering sufficient water infrastructure and meeting increasing housing demand.

Cartwright also said that though the announcement “provides reassurance for developers awaiting funding, it is essential to acknowledge that a significant gap remains. The ambition of 1,400 new social homes, if achieved, falls short of the annual need of 2,200 homes”.

The chief executive of the Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Associations (NIFHA), Seamus Leheny said that the social housing waiting list is “the biggest it has ever been”, while the new build social housing budget so far this year has been “the lowest it has been in generations”.

Leheny said that the additional funding is welcome “but we are still far below the level of investment we need to be at to start to make some impact on the waiting list”.

He added: “The delivery of new social housing has been led by housing associations, who have been providing the match funding each year to build almost 2000 new homes, and have proven that this is the best model for delivery.

“The fact is that the budget allocation to the Social Housing Development Programme needs to be increased – we simply are not being given enough NI Executive funding to build the number of social homes we need.”

However, Leheny said that waiting for in-year allocations for capital works is not a sustainable way of tackling housing, stating that the sector needs to see how additional funding for NI Water can be strategically invested to support delivering new build housing.

He continued: “Housing associations now have a matter of months to progress 800 additional units, which will mean we need to see support from the Department for Communities, NI Housing Executive, Northern Ireland Water and the planning department from the 11 councils to help ensure that these can be successfully progressed.”

Leheny said that multi-year budgets, with annual targets in excess of 2,000 new homes are needed to tackle the housing crisis.

In closing, he said: “And hand in hand with this, we need to also see immediate investment in waste water infrastructure, particularly in areas of high demand such as Belfast and Derry, as without this we will not be in a position to complete many housing projects.”