October 2023 marks L&Q’s 60th anniversary. L&Q started life in little more than an empty flat in Greenwich when a group of professionals came together to create Quadrant Housing Association. Sixty years later, and we house around 250,000 people across London, the Southeast and North West.
An anniversary provides the opportunity to reflect on the story so far, but also our reason for being. Social purpose is central to everything we do, and while our scale and ambition have grown over the last six decades, our fundamental motivations remain the same.
As we enter our 61st year, the housing shortage of today bears remarkable resemblance to the levels of need seen in 1963.
The number of households in private rented accommodation is similar to that of the 1960s when England’s housing crisis triggered a wave of social home building. How did we get here?
When we formed, the vast majority of new homes were built by councils and almost entirely funded by central government. In 1973, Quadrant Housing Association joined forces with London Housing Trust. A year later, the 1974 Housing Act made significant levels of public subsidies available for housing associations, giving L&Q the security needed to grow into a major landlord.
The Housing Act 1988 was another landmark moment. By introducing provisions to encourage the transfer of homes from councils to housing associations and enabling landlords like L&Q to use private finance (“mixed funding”) alongside public subsidy, it set off a more ambitious era of expansion.
During the 2000’s, L&Q embarked on a sustained period of growth, with four mergers adding 17,000 homes to our portfolio. This continued into the 2010s as we ramped up development and came together with East Thames to create the largest provider of new affordable homes in the country.
Merging with like-minded providers offered a world of new possibilities that emerged by virtue of our increased size.
The financial stability that comes with being a larger organisation is an obvious point, but there were also benefits when it came to attracting investment, regeneration and strategic partnerships.
The start of the 2010s saw public funding for affordable homes cut by a staggering 60%. In a growing housing crisis, we found new ways to generate income, such as delivering homes for sale on the open market and using the profits to build affordable homes.
Through projects like Barking Riverside, we’re building more than 10,000 homes with the Mayor of London, served by a new railway station and riverboat service, new schools and community led infrastructure.
We can do that because, unlike many private developers, we can invest for the long-term as a not-for-profit. This shows the very best of what housing associations can achieve.
We became more commercial in order to keep delivering our mission, but being driven by a social purpose doesn’t mean we always got things right. We have all seen the upsetting stories of residents who have been let down by their landlords.
A difficult case study of why this is important came in July, when the Ombudsman published a report into L&Q’s complaints handling, highlighting cases between March 2019 and October 2022 where we let residents down.
Like others, we have slowed development activity in the face of high interest rates, cost inflation and economic uncertainty, and prioritised investing in the homes and services we provide for residents to put things right.
Over the next 15 years, we will invest £3bn into ensuring every resident’s home is safe, decent and energy efficient. We’re also transforming the quality and responsiveness of our repairs service, so we can deliver more repairs each day, and a first-time fix when possible.
Underpinning these changes is a £40m investment in a new housing management system and other technologies that will improve how we manage data and communicate with residents.
But if we are truly serious about meeting the scale of the housing crisis today, we must get the sector building again. Until we have long-term thinking, that is just not possible.
More and longer-term grant funding is part of the solution but will only go so far in a climate of financial constraints. We need new ways of financing projects, like rolling loans recycled and paid back at the end of a project.
Fundamentally, we need certainty about the rents we can charge. If we don’t know what our finances will look like year-to-year, then it is incredibly hard to plan. A long-term rent settlement is essential if we are to increase investment again.
If we keep rents below inflation, we need some way of recouping those losses over time in a way which is sustainable and affordable for residents.
A home is a fundamental human need. It’s about more than just a roof over someone’s head: it’s the stable foundation we all need from which to build our lives. As housing associations, the homes that we build and manage are much more than physical structures.
Rather than existing in isolation, they are connected to the health, financial stability and social opportunities of the people who live in them.
L&Q has evolved over the years, but our reasons for existing have never been more relevant. Right now, 8.5 million people in this country cannot access the housing they need. We are ready to play our part but cannot do this without long-term political commitment.
Our next chapter begins as we approach a general election. Whoever wins, the next Government must be ambitious in its approach to housing and make solving this crisis a priority from the start.
