Local Partnerships – Recent Speaking Engagements

The housing crisis remains at the top of councils’ and the government’s agenda. As part of our remit to share knowledge and learnings we regularly present at housing and infrastructure conferences to help share best practice.

Inside Government “Income Generation” conference

On 28^th March Simon Bandy spoke at the Inside Government “Income Generation” conference, using his experience in the housing and development sector to illustrate how councils can develop commercial and financially sustainable strategies. Simon concentrated on the opportunities provided by sharing services, skills and other resources. Commercial skills are in short supply and expensive (particularly in the housing and property sector).

Councils do not need to have all of the necessary commercial skills in house. A key element of developing a commercial strategy is to look at what is required, what the organisation is good at and already doing and most importantly to consider the skills and experience available in partner organisations. He argued that this goes well beyond ‘shared services’ and should be a key consideration when looking at partnerships, joint ventures and other vehicles that councils develop with both public and private sector partners.

Simon spoke in the same session as Cllr Peter Fleming (Leader of Sevenoaks District Council and a LGA Deputy Chairman). Cllr Fleming explained the LGAs role in this field and how Sevenoaks District Council had become one of the first local authorities to develop a rolling financial plan independent of Government grant.

Explore Offsite Housing conference

The Explore Offsite Housing conference took place on Tuesday 10 April. The aim of the conference was to “bring together technology leaders to discuss the growing opportunities that the housing shortage presents for offsite construction solutions”.

Local Partnerships’ Housing Director, Jenny Coombs, spoke at the conference. Explore Offsite Housing brought together technology leaders to discuss the growing opportunities that the housing shortage presents for offsite construction solutions. Jenny’s discussion of how the public sector is embracing offsite construction concluded that a tipping point is approaching, with strong government support and increasing numbers of housing associations and councils testing the waters with offsite. Her conclusions were backed up by the varied case studies presented from around the country of how offsite is being put into practice. She gave a presentation on how the public sector is embracing the use of offsite housing. In her presentation, she quoted a survey by Inside Housing which found although 49 councils have set up 58 companies, some have not yet built an actual home.