With the transition period over and a UK/EU trade deal agreed, do we have a better understanding of how Brexit will affect the social housing sector? Has the sector’s historic uncertainty been replaced by a clearer picture of things to come?
In our annual Health of the Sector survey, we asked 104 industry leaders about the impact of Brexit on their social housing organisations.
Here’s what social housing leaders told us about Brexit’s impact on their sector.
What effect will Brexit have on your organisation?
In every survey since 2017, almost nobody has said Brexit will have a positive impact on their organisation. We weren’t surprised to find the sector still feels this way, but it is still quite incredible given that 52 per cent of the British electorate voted to leave the EU.
This year, slightly fewer people think Brexit will have a negative effect on their organisation. But more than a third still don’t know what the effects will be, and we’ve seen a seven-percentage point increase in those saying Brexit won’t affect them at all.
These findings took us by surprise.
It’s been widely reported that pre-Brexit stockpiling of supplies and subsequent gridlock at UK ports are hampering the construction industry. This will undoubtedly affect social housing development programmes, so we expected to see more respondents predicting a negative effect in 2021.
What are the key effects of Brexit to your organisation?
