Reviewing Housing Delivery Vehicles: Supporting councils to build better, faster and more efficiently

Housing delivery vehicles (HDVs) are a key tool for local authorities to address housing challenges, with over 200 now in operation across the UK. Local Partnerships has supported councils by creating and updating the Housing Delivery Vehicle Toolkit, while also conducting independent reviews of many HDVs to assess their performance and effectiveness.

The Challenge:

There has been a dramatic increase in recent years in the number of councils who have established housing delivery vehicles. It is estimated that there are more than 200 housing delivery vehicles in existence and owned by local authorities, in the UK today.

No two delivery vehicles are identical as they have been set up to meet local needs. For example some are:

• wholly owned by local authorities
• Joint Ventures (JV) with the private sector
• designed to build new homes
• established to acquire homes

The objectives of delivery vehicles vary, but typically include:

• addressing market failure
• building new homes (perhaps aimed at a certain part of the market)
• making better use of existing housing stock
• delivering high design standards
• kickstarting wider regeneration
• generating a financial return to the council

The solution:

In response to this clear need from the sector, we have relaunched an updated version of our Housing Delivery Vehicle Toolkit. It is free to download.

We also ran a webinar about ‘The future of housing delivery vehicles’ webinar. Our team of experts discussed on the following; considerations in establishing delivery vehicles, how to review progress and the experience so far: lessons learned and good practice. Please find the replay below as well.

Our regular reviews of housing delivery vehicles typically include consideration of the following:

• Examining the council’s arrangements for governance and oversight.
• Identifying any necessary additional client support arrangements.
• Assessing if delivery vehicles are achieving their stated objectives and providing value for money.
• Identifying key risks to the Council (including financial risks).
• Recommendations that could enabling viability in the short to medium term.
• Whether councils could and should provide further financial support and whether it could utilise CIL or commercial property revenues to fund the vehicle.
• Whether work being undertaken for the Housing Revenue Account would be better delivered in house or through delivery vehicles.

Lessons learned:

Local Partnerships has conducted many reviews of housing delivery vehicles, to provide assurance to councils as to the progress of their vehicles, make recommendations for improvements, and future ways forward for the councils. Although no two vehicles – and therefore no two reviews – are exactly the same, it is possible to identify some key, recurring trends from those reviews.

• Objectives are often not clear enough, or are in conflict with each other
• Delivery pipelines are often not robust enough
• Pace of delivery is generally slower than anticipated
• Housing development is not easy!
• The shareholder role is crucial

The impact:

In recent years Local Partnerships have reviewed many housing delivery vehicles.

For example, in summer 2023, we led a review of Exeter City Living, the Housing Delivery Vehicle established by Exeter City Council. Our report to the council made recommendations on the best routes to deliver the pipeline of an estimated 500 homes, supported by Brownfield Land Release Fund resources of around £6m.

Bindu Arjoon, Chief Executive of Exeter City Council, said the following:

Local Partnerships were a great help to us in leading a review of the housing delivery vehicle which we established five years ago. They brought to the table knowledge and understanding of the dynamics and challenges for local authorities around housing delivery vehicles, insight from other areas facing similar issues, current market conditions as well as deeper insight into the role and behaviour of the development industry. This clarity has given us confidence around options for the council to consider for the way forward for development of land in our ownership.

The future of housing delivery vehicles’ webinar

Can we help?

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