Nick Atkin says housing associations fear having to retrofit new homes if they are not built to a high enough quality by housebuilders
A group of housing providers in Yorkshire is in discussions about setting a minimum quality standard for homes bought from housebuilders through section 106 deals.
Nick Atkin, chief executive of Yorkshire Housing, speaking at the Housing Community Summit in Liverpool yesterday, said providers in the county are concerned that they have been “bringing into the affordable housing stock properties that we are going to have to go back and retrofit within 10 years”.
He said one of Yorkshire’s three housing partnerships are in discussions about setting a minimum standard when forward buying homes off housebuilders.
Atkin, speaking on a main stage panel at the conference, said: “The coming together of all the housing providers has given us an ability to have a conversation, to say that we are going to set a standard beneath which none of us will drop, no matter what the price.
“That’s the only way we will get developers to raise the standard of the quality of the homes that they’re bringing forward for affordable rent as part of the wider development.”
>> See also: What does the collapse in section 106 demand mean for housing delivery?
>> See also: ’Customer obsessed’: Yorkshire Housing boss Nick Atkin on using data and tech to improve housing and tenancy management
Atkin told Housing Today in an interview in May that Yorkshire Housing is working on what it calls a “Yorkshire homes standard”, which will go “above and beyond” the government’s decent homes standard – minimum standards that social homes are expected to meet.
The Yorkshire homes standard is being designed in collaboration with tenants and will be focused on good insulation and energy-efficient heating systems.
There has been mounting concern in the sector in recent months about a drop in demand from housing associations to forward buy homes from housebuilders through section 106 planning deals.
Syreeta Robinson-Gayle, head of affordable housing at Barratt London, told the London Assembly earlier in July “developers will be building out affordable homes and there will be no one to take them.”
Several registered providers, many of whom also have constrained balance sheets, have told Housing Today they desire more control over quality and design as reasons to back away from section 106.
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