Healthy homes, ingredients and ovens: Opportunities for councils to collaborate

Oven-ready or ready ovens?

There’s a lot of energy and creativity devoted towards the Government’s commitment to accelerate housing development and achieve the ambition to build 1.5 million
homes. It’s not just about having oven-ready projects, but also having the ovens that are ready for the projects.

Many local authorities are already engaged in building new social and affordable housing that is not only on their books but can be other affordable housing working with their own development companies and third-party organisations such as housing associations. This happens through various routes including mixed tenure developments and joint venture/partnering arrangements.

There are frameworks and dynamic purchasing systems for developing homes on land owned by Homes England and other public sector bodies, on the one hand, put out by Homes England itself and on the other hand, by some organisations masquerading as central purchasing bodies. Local authorities will be conscious of these as well as launching their own procurement processes where they are seeking a strong input into the specification of what is built.

Will the new procurement rules be good or bad for partnership?

New procedures that succeed in these processes will not be the same as now, once the Procurement Act
2023 (the Act) finally comes into force in February 2025, covering the whole procurement cycle (including contract management). New requirements to publish notices at every turn of a project could further embed a ‘contractualism’ that is often evident in the commissioner-contractor dynamic.

The question of whether there should be a competitive tendering procedure under the 2023 Act in the first place will still require an understanding of whether the project is a public works contract. The logical order in which this point is considered under that Act is not the same as before. However, the current assumption that a public works contract should always be tendered will be less important than demonstrating value for money, public benefit, open compliance with policy objectives and transparency in acting with integrity (see section 12 Procurement Act 2023 (Objectives)).

What about real collaboration?

There is the opportunity to develop a relational approach that addresses the same objectives but in a context outside the full rigour of the procurement regulatory regime, building in safeguards that:

• address the statutory duties of councils to obtain best consideration on disposals of land;
• make sure that there is no subsidy or if there is a subsidy, a pre-stated case is prepared and processed;
• allow the regulatory framework for housing associations (where applicable) to provide further assurance in the stewardship of resources;
• establish an agreed process that sets out the stages for demonstrating project viability and the gateways for proceeding with a project;
• ensure clarity on how the money flows to pay for the resources devoted to each project in the pipeline covered by the partnering arrangement;
• allow others to take part, beyond the initial players (to release the greatest resources available); and
• are monitored with comprehensive and tight programme management.

Underpinning this is trust, with key people from all parties showing tenacity, commitment to the long game, mental dexterity, a sense of proportion, openness to challenge and technical competence.

A recipe is already being trialled

A recently announced example of an initiative with all these ingredients is the partnering arrangement between Homes for the West Midlands LLP (which has five RPs as its promoters) and West Midlands Combined Authority. It took time to get to the point of launching both the LLP itself and the collaborative partnering agreement that the LLP has with WMCA, but it has all the components needed for an oven to turn the ingredients into a healthy diet of homes in the right place for the people who need them.

For more information, please contact Mark Cook.

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