Whitehall extends housing borrowing bid deadline

The Government has extended the deadline for councils to bid for additional borrowing to build council housing.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced yesterday (6 September) the closing date for submitting bids to the Additional Housing Revenue Account borrowing programme has been extended from 7 September to 30 September.

Local authorities now have an additional three weeks to bid for increases in their caps between 2019 to 2020 and 2021 to 2022.

Communities secretary James Brokenshire announced in June that local authorities would be able to bid for a share of £1bn extra borrowing to build much-needed homes.

The £1bn will be split equally between London and the rest of England.

According to the Government, raising the borrowing cap will help local authorities to build ‘more of the right homes, in the right places, and ensuring that the housing market works for all parts of the community’.

Responding to the announcement in June, the Local Government Association’s housing spokesman, Cllr Martin Test, said it was ‘a positive step in the right direction towards triggering the renaissance in council housebuilding’.

‘The next step for the Government now is to accept the calls of the LGA and the influential Treasury Select Committee to scrap the cap on council borrowing in every community across the country,’ added Cllr Tett.

‘This would free councils to make the investment decisions that will boost housebuilding in their local areas unencumbered from rules and regulations created in Whitehall.’