With 57,000 homes, the London Borough of Southwark is the largest social housing provider in England.
This paper sets out the "Case for Change" of how Southwark Council will repair and maintain its existing homes. It is about transforming how our teams work and where they work and understanding the connectivity and relationships between the various functions of our Council wide system while stabilising our repairs service. It is a call for a more interventionist approach and step change to improving our Repairs and Maintenance services and do so in a much more structured way than we have done so far.
Over a decade into austerity, local government finances have been eroded to tipping point, and so we face many more years of fiscal restraint as we move into a new era of permanent austerity. Meanwhile demand for our services is rising, partly as a result of the impact of austerity on some of our communities and partly because of the macro-economic reality we find ourselves in. All this is happening in the context of increasing climate targets and a new Housing Regulatory Framework coming into effect in 2024 and which are driving up investment requirements for our Council owned assets and the Borough’s housing stock.
2022 has also seen the start of the end of cheap money, with inflation and monetary policies driving up prices and interest rates and with it the cost of borrowing (debt), creating uncertainty around future funding options. The pandemic and inflation that followed has had a negative impact upon our own finances and operations, creating significant pressures on our Housing Revenue Account (HRA) which has been depleted to its lowest ever point.
With the rent cap firmly remaining in place, there is limited room within the HRA to absorb ever increasing demands, and the new burdens arising from government directives around building safety are further exacerbating this. Not only does there need to be significant re-prioritisation of existing resources to those areas of highest need, but also a focus on identifying additional resources to continue to fund our capital programme and investment into improving services.
Now more than ever, our Borough is facing significant on-going financial challenges and risks – doing nothing or to continue doing what we have done in the past is not an option, nor is doing less. We need to find our own ways to plan and then gear up for a future in which we can operate effectively, independently and do so within a reduced financial envelope - this requires us to have a response and then move at pace.
To download a copy of the "Case for Change - Transforming Asset Management", please follow the link below.