Northern Ireland Housing Conference 2010 – 25 March 2010

Mr Chairman, honoured guests, conference delegates.

Good morning and thank you for your warm welcome and invitation to deliver this keynote address at the start of your conference.

The theme of your conference today, ’Delivering more with less’ could not be more appropriate given the prevailing economic climate facing us all.

Your hosts have assembled an impressive array of speakers to lead your deliberations throughout the day and I have no doubt it will prove a very interesting and informative day’s work.

There can be nobody here this morning that by now is not aware of the shortfall the housing budget suffered as a result of the collapse of the land and property market. With so much of my budget predicated on land and property sales, it was inevitable that the downturn in the market would have a more savage impact on housing than perhaps elsewhere.

My budget has already suffered losses of up to £200m in the last few years and next year I have already been asked to find savings of a further £30m. If I am to continue to protect the vulnerable and provide for those in greatest need, it is vital that I find ways to effectively deliver more with less.  

Of course I would love to see the housing budget placed on a more firm financial footing.  I have made that case to my Executive colleagues and will continue to do so.  However despite the well documented budgetary problems, we have still managed to work something of an economic miracle.

I am proud that this year we will deliver the largest number of new homes for a decade. There can be no more basic fundamental human right than having a home to call your own and that is why I made the increased provision of housing my first and foremost priority. But I do not plan to stop there. Having delivered so much this year, I have set the bar even higher for next year.

Our target for next year will be to deliver 2,000 new homes. But it is not just a numbers game. I want to increase both the quality and quantity of our housing stock. That is why we have started work on an exciting new demonstration project in South Belfast that will deliver one of the largest mixed tenure schemes of its kind across Great Britain and Ireland, delivering homes to the very latest and highest standards in terms of energy consumption and sustainability.

I am also proud that we have some of the highest quality of public housing anywhere across the UK.  The investment we have made in addressing unfitness has literally halved the number of unfit homes in the last ten years and the unfitness rates for Social Housing alone stand at just 0.2%. So in looking to do more for less, this gives us a very good base to set off from.

My focus is not just on delivering more, better quality social and affordable homes,  The private rented sector, often overlooked and underestimated, has steadily and stealthily growth in size and attractiveness over the last 10 years. It comes as quite a surprise to many that this sector now accounts for around 17% of Northern Ireland’s total housing stock.  It includes a high proportion of newly built properties, offering a vast range of choice in housing type, from terraced, detached to flats and apartments and as a consequence poor fitness levels, previously associated with this sector are now much less of a feature.

Importantly this sector provides this good quality accommodation to a wide range of individuals and households with equally diverse needs and aspirations.  By its nature this sector operates across all parts of Northern Ireland providing flexibility, allowing tenants to live in the area of their choice and in the type of accommodation best suited to their needs. This also makes a hugely important contribution to our Shared Future agenda.   

Despite these many positives the sector is not without its problems. Building Sound Foundations - A Strategy for the Private Rented Sector, which I launched yesterday following lengthy consultation with all stakeholders, provides a comprehensive package of measures.  My priority is to address the less attractive aspects of the sector, ensure better regulation and provide greater safeguards for both landlords and tenants. My officials are already working to ensure pro-active and determined action to deliver the many initiatives signalled in the strategy which I am confident will assist the private rented sector to play its full part in the wider housing agenda.

There is no doubt we live in changing and challenging times.  Maintaining the status quo will not be an option. Having said that, the issues we face today are quite different to those we faced ten years ago. We face new challenges, so we need to find new ways to work smarter. I firmly believe that every challenge presents an opportunity and I suppose the challenge for us today, is to identify that opportunity for tomorrow.

Some of you may already be aware that I asked a leading housing consultancy firm in London, Savills, to do some work in respect of how we manage and maintain our stock. They visited over 9,000 Housing Executive homes and their report is perhaps one of the most comprehensive ever undertaken. I have already made it available in the Assembly Library and would commend it to any of you with an interest in it.

This work has already attracted considerable discussion and indeed was debated in the Assembly earlier this month.  What this sort of report actually does is provide an evidence base from which informed choices can be made.  

That evidence base will help me identify where our resources can make the greatest impact in the coming years, supporting those in greatest need.  Because conference delegates, we must not lose sight that housing need changes and simply doing the same thing over and over again is not going to address the changing nature of need.

Whilst I am still working through the recommendations from Savills, I am already implementing many of the recommendations from the report presented to me some time ago by Baroness Ford on the funding of Social Housing here.

Whilst the market is not suited to selling land right now, it remains an important asset at our disposal.  I have therefore insisted that we build more homes on land already in our ownership as one way of maximizing those assets. Next year we have programmed the greatest number of homes ever to be delivered in this manner.  Of course we must always match housing need to where the land is. But if we can build to maximum site capacity where social need alone is low in any given location, surplus housing on that site can be made available for low cost, possibly affordable housing.  This is a new initiative I want to see taken forward in the coming year. I am encouraged that it has potential and some work is already underway, particularly in looking at sites in rural locations.

Making the best use of our resources, getting more bang for our buck, was precisely why I brought forward a new procurement strategy.  With over £155m of public money invested in our new build programme this year alone, it stands to reason that good procurement compliant practices can help us deliver more for less. Housing Associations have already formed themselves into four procurement groups to deliver the Social Housing Development Programme.  The Strategy is still in its infancy, but already I am encouraged of the potential that exists through more collaborative working like this. And it should not just be through the new build programme that Housing Associations look to make greater efficiencies. There must exist a lot of duplication in the services currently provided by Associations to their tenants and I am encouraged to learn that some Associations are already pooling their resources to deliver both an effective and more efficient service that can satisfy both tenant and Association alike.

In helping support the work of our Housing Associations, we have already attracted record levels of funding from the European Investment Bank into Northern Ireland. This investment is very welcome. I see Tom Hackett from the European Bank is here today and whilst 6 Housing Associations have now benefitted from this European funding, I know there is more available.

The new interest from Europe will be on retro-fitting our existing stock. New investment, at even better lending rates than before, will potentially be made available for those schemes that can bring older houses up to more modern environmentally friendly standards. My officials have already met with the Housing Finance Corporation who will provide the vehicle for this new funding stream and a conference in Belfast next month will provide greater detail on what is available. This was a key issue we discussed at the inaugural meeting of British Irish Council Housing Ministers which I hosted in Newcastle just before Christmas. It is an issue that we alongside other jurisdictions are interested in developing and I am pleased to promote next months conference as a must go for those of you, particularly from Housing Associations, who have stock that could benefit from retro-fitting.

I also see from your agenda that Duncan Morrow will address you later about ‘the role of housing in creating a shared future’. Delivering more for less is a challenge in itself, but when taken alongside the barriers of our still divided society, it just places an even greater burden in our path.  Put simply, the cost of division is one which we can not continue to ignore, we literally can’t afford to.

I have already placed a shared future at the heart of all my endeavours in housing. More and more people are saying that they want to live in mixed neighbourhoods, yet for those particularly in public housing, the choice remains limited. So from November this year, we will start to ask applicants if they wish to live in a shared neighbourhood. It will provide us further data about where this shared housing is needed.  

We have done some very innovative and ground breaking work to deliver shared future housing since Carran Crescent broke the mould some years ago.  But in my opinion we have not gone far enough. I want to see shared housing delivered as the norm, not the exception. So I welcome any new thinking you have that can help us move closer to that day.

Delegates, you have a busy and demanding schedule ahead of you today and I do not want to keep you further from it.  I have a passion to deliver for those in greatest need and I know you share that passion with me. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.

I have already said that I will leave no stone unturned in my desire to make a difference for those in need. That effectively challenges us all to think differently, to move away from our comfort zones and to think of things that were perhaps once unthinkable.  

Thank you for your attention this morning, I wish you well in your deliberations and my best wishes for the remainder of your event.