Would you like to join CIPFA’s Local Authority Housing Panel?
At a time when affordable housing is high on the national policy agenda, CIPFA’s Local Authority Housing Panel is playing an active part in the development of ideas for the future financing of social housing and related policies. The Panel meets 3 to 4 times a year and is responsible for all financial management and policy issues that affect local authority housing. In particular, the Panel:

• develops Institute responses to Government, professional bodies' and other bodies' consultation/discussion papers and exposure drafts
• develops, promotes and maintains best practice, standards and guidelines
• produces and disseminates relevant advice and material for members and employers in local authority housing
• establishes positive and productive professional relationships with Government, government departments and agencies, the national audit bodies, professional regulators and other bodies falling within the Panel's defined areas of responsibility.

If you feel you could contribute to the Panel’s thinking and activities and would like to be considered for membership of the Panel, in the first instance please contact julian.smith@cipfa.org with a short summary of your CV and of your reasons for interest in joining the Panel.

CLG publishes Self-financing summary report
Communities & Local government have now published a key and long-awaited report on the Self-Financing Project (an exercise to test the costs, benefits and practicalities of operating outside the Housing Revenue Account subsidy system).

The report sets out the findings of the project and summarises the evidence from model 30 year business plans prepared by the local authorities and ALMOs about the viability of 'self-financing'. It also addresses legal, accounting and other issues which would have to be resolved in order to implement self-financing.

The findings of the self-financing project will provide key evidence for the review, announced in December, of the HRA Subsidy system and there is a clause (currently Clause 297 but likely to be renumbered again) in the Housing and Regeneration Bill which allows for the Secretary of State to enter into an agreement with a Local Authority to move all or some of its properties out of the HRA subsidy system.

CIPFA has been involved, together with a number of other bodies, in the work with CLG on self-financing. The report can be downloaded from the CLG website at: http://www.communities.gov.uk/publications/housing/selffinancingservices.

New local government housing plans build for the future, CIPFA says
The recent call from the Housing Minister, Yvette Cooper MP, to review the housing subsidy system has been welcomed by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) as a much-needed reassessment of a system which has clearly outlived its usefulness. Read more.

Local Authority Housing Newsletter - April 2008 Issue
Click here to download the latest edition of the Panel's newsletter. This special edition focuses on the launch by Ministers in March of a wide-ranging review of the Housing Subsidy system in England, which may also generate debate with regard to housing finance issues in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is also an update on forthcoming CIPFA Housing Advisory Network events. To subscribe to this free newsletter please email julian.smith@cipfa.org.