The editor’s rundown: Spending Review in sight, new finance flows, and starts plummet

Our special report this month takes an in-depth look at national development figures over the past decade, as affordable housing starts plummet across England. Social Housing’s report finds particularly sharp drops across all tenures in London as development in the city has become “difficult” and increasingly financially unviable. Read Keith Cooper’s report in full here.

 

New finance

 

Elsewhere, the latest Quarterly Survey has found that new finance in the final quarter of the 2025 financial year was at its second-highest level in five years, just down from the figure for the same period a year earlier. Including refinances, the sector raised £4.3bn in new finance in the three-month period to 31 March 2025, slightly lower than the £4.4bn agreed in the fourth quarter of 2023-24.

 

Renewed activity has certainly continued to play out in headlines this month, with a number of providers announcing deals. In the North East of England, Karbon Homes secured £200m of finance with three banks, including two new to the group.

 

Further south, borrowers benefitted from two different government-backed guarantee schemes, including the very first lending through a National Wealth Fund (NWF) partnership.

 

Hampshire-based Vivid, which manages 35,000 homes, became the first association to secure a loan from any of the four retrofit-funding schemes backed by a combined total of £1.3bn of NWF guarantees. The association has agreed £50m from Barclays – the maximum loan size available from the lender through its portion of the Treasury-backed funding.

 

News of the transaction came after a senior NWF banker urged housing providers to take advantage of the cheaper retrofit finance available through its guarantees before it “runs out”, in an interview with Social Housing last month. 

 

Meanwhile, Wiltshire-based Selwood Housing has borrowed £75m through the Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme.

 

More providers may now be able to access that scheme, administered by investment firm Venn, after recent rule changes were implemented to enable supported housing to be used as security. Social Housing spoke to sector insiders about the change, including one large care provider that will now consider the scheme in its funding options. Michael Lloyd reports.

 

And on the for-profit side of the sector, Sage Homes used a commercial mortgage-backed security to raise £270m.

For-profits

 

There is certainly no shortage of appetite for growth among the for-profits, new research from Savills confirms. The analysis indicates that due to the “ambition” of new emerging players, such providers could own at least 150,000 homes by 2030 – a tripling from the current position. The report suggests that while shared ownership remains the most common tenure, by 2030 around a quarter of for-profits’ homes will be social rent as they look to “diversify their tenure mix”.

 

At the same time, conversation has continued to flow around the right approach to for-profits and equity capital within the sector, particularly with regard to the impact on housing associations as peers or would-be partners.

 

At the Social Housing Finance Conference on 14 May, finance leaders voiced their perspectives on the opportunities and risks of new financial models. The incoming chief financial officer of one large G15 landlord cautioned that “complexity can be its own enemy”, while the former executive finance director of another warned that it is “wrong” to assume private capital will have longer than a five-year view.

 

Also speaking at the conference, Fiona MacGregor, chief executive of the Regulator of Social Housing, acknowledged that there might be a role for a “less integrated model” between owning and managing homes to help address the housing crisis. But she emphasised that providers must ask themselves the right questions on how this would work in practice.

 

Later, at the UK Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum, a fund manager at a major investment firm said it was incumbent on investors to articulate that their interest in social and affordable housing is not “for a quick buck”. Andrew Davey, who is head of affordable housing at CBRE Investment Management, described private capital as being in its “adolescence” in social housing. “We need to work out what we bring to the table as institutions, which is primarily access to capital and long-term capital, articulating that we’re not in it for a quick buck, and we’re not in it to flip houses,” he said.

 

Regulation

 

Elsewhere, a slew of regulatory decisions published during the month presented a mixed picture for sector performance.

 

In positive news, Mosscare St Vincent’s became the first provider to be upgraded for consumer standards, earning a C1 this month after being graded C2 in its first assessment in September.

 

But, for local authorities, the number of providers struggling with consumer standards continued to grow, as Brent Council joined the ranks with a C3 grade.

 

Elsewhere, housing association Metropolitan Thames Valley was downgraded to a G2 for governance, after the regulator found a number of issues including “weaknesses” in its approach to stress-testing.

 

New faces

 

Finally, high-profile HR changes this month included the departure of Legal & General’s head of capital investing, with the company expecting to announce a newly created role soon. More on that here, and our full round-up of appointments is here.

 

And, to get to know one particular new appointee, Social Housing sat down with L&Q’s new executive director of finance, Ed Farnsworth. The graduate trainee turned finance boss tells Michael Lloyd why he wants to be known as the finance director who “listens to the voice of the resident”. Read the in-depth interview in full here.

 

Sarah Williams, editor, Social Housing