Council-Led Housing Forum

Responding to increasing housing targets, tightening budgets and the desire to retain assets for long-term revenue, local authorities are once again starting to build their own homes.

New approaches such as wholly owned development companies or in-house teams are being set up across the capital, but lack of cross-authority support, capacity and skills is preventing authorities reaching their full potential.

As part of the Mayor’s Building Council Homes for Londoners initiative, this forum is providing technical advice to practitioners involved in the council-led delivery of homes. Boroughs that are pioneering delivery in-house or through housing companies, housing associations and independent experts share skills, experience and lessons learned, including pitfalls to avoid. The Council-Led Housing Forum encourages delegates to share their own experiences to build a strong knowledge base across the forum. The ultimate aim is to speed up delivery.

The first two events allowed practitioners to share their experiences of scaling up and building the right team. Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design kindly facilitated the third event, running an interactive workshop mapping the relationship between housing delivery and planning from early stage discussions to post determination and delivery. The following four sessions were aimed at junior staff involved in direct delivery and walked attendees through the full development management process, from feasibility to handover and aftercare. Most recently, Pollard Thomas Edwards hosted a session on achieving design quality, with workshops facilitated by Municipal housing development consultancy.

Who is the forum for?

These free events are for local authority staff managing housing delivery projects day to day. The programme covers partnerships/special purpose vehicles (i.e. non-estate regeneration) wholly owned companies and direct delivery through Housing Revenue Accounts (HRA).

Borough legal, finance and property teams and Housing Associations are actively encouraged to take part as appropriate.

Events

The following events are subject to postponement due to COVID-19. We are looking into ways of delivering these sessions online. Updates to follow soon.

More information

If you’d like to learn more, contact Visakha Sri Chandrasekera, Council-Led Housing Forum Manager
visakha@futureoflondon.org.uk

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