Background
In 1980 Clive Thornton, the Chief General Manager of Abbey National Building Society established their own housing association, Abbey Housing Association Limited, to become involved in market rented housing. It was the first organisation to be approved for the provision of assured tenancies under the 1980 Housing Act. Abbey Housing was established as an Industrial & Provident (I&P) Society, thus any profit made was either to be retained within the business or used for designated purposes. During the later part of the 1980’s it extended its activities to included schemes for sale and shared ownership as well as market rent.
In the early 1990's Abbey National decided to withdraw from these activities and in1994 the Association became independent and changed its name to Aldbury Housing Association. In 1998 with further changes at Board level including the appointment of a Managing Director, the Company was re-launched as Aldbury.
Purpose
The purpose of Aldbury is to provide good quality small and middle range housing for sale and market rent both alone and in partnership with others. To help to promote social inclusion, by working with Housing Associations and other public bodies to provide a mixture of tenure on new and existing developments. As an Industrial & Provident Society, Aldbury does not distribute any profit made to its shareholders.
Whilst the majority of the profits generated by development activity are currently retained to enable the business to grow, it is our intention in the future to make Gift Aid payments to those organisations where we have partnership arrangements.
Partnership
As a developer providing housing for sale and market rent in the lower and middle range, Aldbury are happy to work with partners to provide fully integrated mixed developments comprising sale, shared ownership, market and social rented properties. Aldbury has a significant advantage over many other more traditional developers and house builders in that we believe social inclusion can be successfully achieved by fully integrating the tenures, rather than just paying lip service to the requirement.
Not “standard” – one size does not fit all
Aldbury does not have a portfolio of standard house types used on every development; each scheme is specifically designed for its location following discussions with Housing Association partners regarding their requirement on mix, property sizes and the level of integration required.
Quality and affordability
When carrying out mixed tenure developments, Aldbury is happy to employ contractors and consultants who are known to the partnering Housing Association in order to reduce costs and ensure a continuity of quality and design.
Aldbury has completed a number of schemes providing housing for sale within existing social housing estates and is currently working with a number of Housing Associations to provide housing for sale integrated with social housing. In the majority of cases there has been cross subsidy generated from land value, with an increasing involvement in low risk profit sharing arrangements to further enhance the cross subsidy.