Introducing his budget for the year, chancellor Philip Hammond announced a series of measures that will impact credit unions and housing co-operatives.
Mr Hammond committed the government to building 300,000 extra new homes a year by the middle of the next decade. He also pledged to create a £630m small-sites fund to “unstick” the delivery of 40,000 homes and a further £2.7bn to double the Housing Infrastructure Fund.
Overall, the chancellor promised a total of at least £44bn of capital funding, loans and guarantees to support the housing market. The initiative was designed to boost the supply of skills, resources, and building land and to create the financial incentives necessary to deliver 300,000 additional homes a year, on average, by the mid-2020s.
Commenting on the policies announced, Nic Bliss, head of policy at the Confederation of Co-operative Housing said he welcomed the capital funding but said more details were needed. “There have been discussions with the government about funding for community-led housing and if they announce that funding within the capital programme, then that could kickstart our sector. Perhaps it is concerning that stamp duty abolition is likely to lead to further house price inflation and that there was so little emphasis on the need for affordable housing.”
For credit unions, the main change announced in the budget is an increase in the number of potential members that a credit union serving a local area is able to have from two to three million. Matt Bland, head of policy and compliance at the Association of British Credit Unions, said it was a “welcome liberalisation of the common bond requirements”.
He said the change was part of a range of measures Abcul had asked the government to consider following their commitment to review credit union legislation. “It will enable credit unions in larger urban conurbations to extend their common bonds to cover more of a heavily-populated area and may facilitate the helpful consolidation of credit unions where appropriate. Over time it will also enable and facilitate the growth of the largest credit unions where they would otherwise have their expansion curtailed by the two million limit,” he added.
“There are a number of other areas – including the powers credit unions have to provide new and innovative services – which we believe warrant further legislative review and reform with great potential to unlock latent growth in the credit union sector and to allow it to play a broader and more effective role in the financial life of the UK. We will continue to work with the Treasury to make the case for these reforms and are encouraged that they are open to considering all feasible legislative reforms which are likely to have a significant positive impact on the growth potential of the sector,” concluded Mr Bland.
Other organisations that include co-ops among their members have also responded to the Budget speech. Tony Armstrong, chief executive of Locality highlighted that the government should look at the role community organisations can play in providing person-centred services to reduce long-term burdens on public services as well as employing local people.
“We want to see the government set out a clear strategy for how it will draw upon and strengthen the huge power that exists within our communities – convening government action, maximising limited resources and building strong local partnerships – so together we can create a fair society where every community thrives,” he wrote.
Campbell McDonald, managing director at Baxendale, an employee-owned enterprise also warned that implementing a national productivity drive as envisaged in the Budget speech would also require a “clear view of the social impact”.
“Investment in R&D, in emerging UK businesses, in digitalisation is a great thing. We just need to make sure we are alive to the social impact of the changes we bring.
“If we want people engaged and passionate at work, they need organisations with clear strategic purpose, where they are managed in a way that respects the effort they bring and seeks to align reward with those who actually generate value, and where leaders hold themselves to account for the impact of everything they do – not just on their numbers, but on the people who work for them, the communities they affect, the planet they inhabit,” he wrote.
