The future social housing provider

Social housing in England is at a critical juncture. The Grenfell Tower tragedy exposed some real problems and led many commentators to conclude that the sector as a whole is incompetently managed. Councils and housing associations had already been grappling with austerity and welfare cutbacks, with economic uncertainty (notably but not exclusively around Brexit) and with the possibility of recession and rising costs. They must now think ahead about how best to position their businesses to deal with the changing nature of affordable housing and demographic change, and what kind of risk management and governance can best ensure resilience. With this report we hope to contribute to these debates. Our purpose is to explore the likely future trends in the operation, structure and customer demographic of a social housing provider in England. The goal is twofold: first, to stimulate discussion and thought within the sector about how housing associations might best move forward in this extremely challenging environment and second, to bring out the implications for Flagship Group (who funded the research) and its management plan.