Richard Boyd Barrett: AHBs overstretched as social housing ramps up

There's no suggestion encircled that there was any wrongdoing by individuals, is there? Is that to me David? Yes. Not to my knowledge, no. So they overstretched themselves, is that? Because I'm struggling to understand why this has happened. Because my gut feeling is that it's because some AHBs are being asked to do things that they're just not, they don't have the capacity to do. And therefore they over, so we're ending up, they get in trouble because they're ambitious in terms of delivering social housing. I mean, is that a fair assessment of what's happening here? Because I'm struggling to understand what do we learn from all of this, right? No individual has done anything terribly wrong, they just overstretched themselves, is that? Perhaps, yeah. Yeah, I might just explain. The problems that were partly caused by Circle were those historic construction projects that they're dealing with. Marla Bun and the Sandtree one? That's correct, yes. So they purchased sites which they then were unable to deliver, is that? That's basically what happened, was it? Yeah, that's pretty much it. But what we're doing, what we introduced in 2025 was an AHB protocol. So other AHBs who are new to coming to the Department for Funding under CAF, we introduced a protocol which looks at their planning, their leadership, their governance. And we go and meet their boards and what we're trying to do is get an assessment of their organisational and technical capacity and see that that technical capacity is commensurate with the type of projects that they're taking on. So these particular issues that arose in Circle won't arise in the future with the AHBs that are coming in looking for CAF funding. That's a great statement. Just remind me how many AHBs there are again, there's hundreds of them. 425. 425 different organisations delivering social housing. Deputy, just to mention, it's only nine large ones, so they deliver over 70% of all the housing. So when you say 425, it sounds like a lot, but in the day-to-day operation of the department or the regulatory authorities or the HFA, it's actually a relatively small number that are receiving funding from our department. It might only be just over 20. Has there been a shift in the balance? Because I'm just trying to understand the burden the AHB sector is trying to take on when we're having to ramp up dramatically the amount of social housing we deliver, absolutely rightly. There's 67,000 social housing units, I think, under AHBs. There's about 150,000 under the local authorities. So they're delivering about a third of social housing. Has that... Half. Sorry, yes. So is the amount that they're being required proportionately increasing over the last, say, 10 years? No, proportionally, it's not about the proportion, it's the overall number. The whole number that we're expecting to deliver has risen dramatically over the last few years as the government has increased its ambition to deliver more social and affordable housing. So if you look at last year when we delivered the most social housing that we've ever done in the state, 9,000 houses last year for social housing, about half of those were by approved housing bodies. And that's why they are now a crucial part of the government's delivery plans. They're one of the four delivery partners that we do need to be in place in order to deliver on the ambition to get to 12,000. But then they get in trouble because they're overambitious in terms of trying to deliver two sites. One of the things that we found is that there's going to be no level of ambition that doesn't have some risk attached to it. What we have done is try to put an architecture around that that protects us to the greatest degree possible by putting in a regulator, by putting in proper protocols around funding, and by managing and mitigating risk appropriately. I can't help feeling that you have all these organizations and you have the replication, replication, replication of people and you're having to try and make sure they have this, that and the other in place rather than having a more streamlined system. I think that's taking it too far, Deputy. I think that what this is evidence of is that we need to make sure our regulation meets the risks that's there. However, I think absolutely the AHPs have delivered for us over the last few years. They have been excellent in terms of the level of delivery and they are a crucial part of that delivery plan going forward. And I think in the main, for each one of the circle issues that we've had, we've had numerous other, countless other delivery by AHPs that's been excellent. So you're not necessarily seeing this here at this GOC because they're not in trouble, but we see it every day that they're delivering very well for us and with very high levels of governance and very good compliance with the regulation standards. What we need is that level of compliance to grow over time as the risk comes with funding. I think that remains to be seen, in my opinion, because a lot of the stuff only is coming on really now. It's been delivered in the last few years and I've seen problems because a lot of the social housing in my area is being delivered by AHPs. In fact, more seems to be being delivered, a lot more by the AHPs than the local authorities. And I wonder about that balance. Maybe that's a question for the department. How exactly is it decided in terms of that? Because I see far more being done by the AHPs than by the local authorities. Who decides that balance? Going forward, after we publish the housing plan in November, we ask the local authorities to make housing delivery action plans in collaboration with the AHPs and the Land Development Agency. What that does is a process over the last while to decide who's going to deliver from what sites. Some sites will be appropriate for the local authority to deliver, and indeed we ask a lot of local authorities and we're hugely ambitious for them. But others may be more appropriate to be delivered by AHPs. And they are putting that in the housing delivery action plans going forward and they'll be published by the end of the year. So you'll be able to see who exactly is going to deliver what through those plans, which are being made at local authority level. I think as well, if I can come in here, Deputy, in terms of your own urban constituency. What we have seen in the last number of years from a social housing delivery perspective is the development of an expertise by certain AHPs in terms of the delivery of apartments, particularly in urban areas. So the mix might be different in other local authority areas where there isn't that particular need. It can certainly vary from local authority area to local authority area, depending on what the needs are. Thank you.