New Partnerships in Affordable Housing: a Pilot Investment Programme open to Housing Associations and Unregistered Bodies
For the past thirty years, the Housing Corporation (the Corporation) has contributed to the provision of new affordable and social housing through the use of its statutory powers to pay grants to registered social landlords (often known as housing associations). Now the Housing Act 2004 includes provisions to extend the Corporation's grant-giving powers to unregistered bodies. It does this by introducing a new Section 27A into the Housing Act 1996.
Once the new legislation has been enacted, the Corporation intends to apply these new powers for the first time early next year. We will launch a £200 million pilot investment programme in February 2005 for new proposals to meet regional priorities for social and affordable housing. The programme will be open to both housing associations (which we will continue to support under our existing powers) and unregistered bodies. This paper sets out the objectives for this initial programme, and outlines the processes and procedures that will put these objectives into practice. In publishing this paper we aim to give interested housing associations and unregistered bodies the information that they need to start to prepare to participate in the programme when it commences in the New Year.
The paper explains in section 6 the actions that all prospective participants need to take now to register their interest in the programme.
The form for expressions of interest is attached to this document in Microsoft Word and PDF formats.
