Highlighting the importance of Shared Ownership at the Labour Party Conference
At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool this September, we hosted a discussion fringe event highlighting the importance of Shared Ownership as a housing tenure for customers.
With currently 7000 homes built as shared ownership, we are committed to the tenure. The aim of the event was to give more exposure to what Shared Ownership is, how important it is as a housing tenure for the country and how vital it can be in helping to solve the housing crisis by supporting customers to get onto the property ladder, in a secure and more affordable way. By utilising Shared Ownership as a housing option it mobilises the housing ladder and enables more customers with housing needs to move into accommodation.
Elizabeth Froude, our Chief Executive Officer said: "In our geographical footprint we have some of the highest and lowest social rents outside of London. We have no single market we are aiming at; what we do is focus on a price point that allows people to live in the communities they work in and that is our primary driver for Shared Ownership."
The event, which has been turned into a dedicated podcast, was chaired by Rhys Moore, Executive Director of Impact at the National Housing Federation and the panel was made up of Elizabeth Froude, our Chief Executive Officer, Ann Santry, Chair of the Shared Ownership Council, Andrew Taylor, Group Planning Director for developer Vistry Partnerships and Cllr Sarah Williams, Deputy Leader of Harringay and member for Housing and Planning.
At the event the panel took a series of questions from the floor with topics including the proposed Shared Ownership code of conduct, the cost of a Shared Ownership model, flexibility of housing tenures, retrofitting and energy standards within existing Shared Ownership homes, service charges and time to deliver on development sites.
Amongst the attendees we heard from were several Shared Ownership customers who praised the tenure itself in supporting them own their own home. They highlighted some of the changes needed to improve the model from their perspective and also took the opportunity to raise valid questions around the models future and retrofitting.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the panelists and the attendees for their thought provoking questions.
If you’d like to listen to snippets of the session we’ve produced a dedicated podcast which also includes event reflection from Elizabeth. You can listen to it here.
Photo caption: The podcast panel included the Chair Rhys Moore, Executive Director of Impact at the National Housing Federation and Platform HG CEO Elizabeth Froude, Ann Santry Chair of the Shared Ownership Council, Andrew Taylor Group Planning Director for developer Vistry Partnerships and Cllr Sarah Williams Deputy Leader of Harringay and member for Housing and Planning.