David Taylor meets ‘realistically optimistic’ Barbara Richardson of Square Roots to ask: is London unaffordable? What could be done to make affordable housing deliver for all? 

Hi, Barbara, how are you? 

Good, thank you! 

Good. I wanted to know a little bit more about what Square Roots does, and I'm sure NLA readers do too! Could you broadly describe your areas of expertise? 

Sure, we are a registered provider. So, for people that don't know what a registered provider is, we are a provider of affordable homes, and we're regulated by the government. We operate across pretty much the whole of London, and we provide a range of homes – anything from shared ownership, a range of affordable rents, which can be very low-level social rents, to an intermediate rent, to a sub-market rent, but generally accessible below-market values and market prices. 

And you have a relationship with a parent company, don't you – London Square? Could you describe how that operates? 

Yes, sure. We're a wholly owned subsidiary of London Square. We were incorporated back in 2021, started trading thereafter, as soon as I joined. The real purpose was to establish an organisation within London Square that could leverage in all of the skills and knowledge of London Square, but to deliver additional affordable homes to the market. So obviously, London Square is a house builder. It delivers affordable homes anyway, as part of its Section 106 obligations, but this was a mechanism to actually be able to deliver above and beyond that. 

Could you describe Square Roots' mission and strategy? 

Our vision, mission and strategy is really to shape the future of London living, and we want to do that by setting new standards for how people experience life in the capital, and we don't think that that is specific to people who are just in the private sale sector or the BTR sector or the market rent sector. We think that should be the same for everybody, whether you're accessing a private home or an affordable home. Our key goals, if you like – we've got lots, as you would imagine, as an organisation, strategic objectives – but the key ones are to build 10,000 homes over the next 10 years and to deliver an excellent customer service across the communities we build. Obviously, we're in a community for the long-term. Once we've built the homes, we're actually then maintaining them, managing them, and part of that community for the next 40, 50, 60 years. So, it's really important to us to get that right. 

Have you got a particular geography? Are you based in a certain area? 

We cover the whole of the capital, so pretty much everything inside the M25, which does include probably a few boroughs that are not deemed a London borough, but mainly inside the M25 at the moment, and that's really because we're still a small business. We only started in 2021; we need to get economies of scale in a geography where we can manage and maintain those homes after they're built relatively easily. Once that portfolio has got bigger, we may well go outside of the M25 boundaries into some of the home counties, but we need to build some economies of scale close to each other to begin with. So predominantly in the capital. 

Ten thousand homes in 10 years is fairly ambitious, would you say? I mean, how optimistic are you about that?  I was speaking to Neil Hook from Places for London last week – I don't know if you saw the interview, and he was pretty optimistic about the housing market generally, from his perspective, from their perspective, given various unblockers. What is the scene, if you like, in affordable? Do you share that optimism? 

I am. I am realistically optimistic. I guess for affordable, it is slightly different in terms of needs and demand, of which we know there is ample need and demand in terms of the affordable. I guess the biggest blocker for building affordable is generally viability, which is for a lot of private sites too, across London. So, for us, trying to unlock that viability and find ways either around that or through that – some of that is maybe released in public land, public sector land to help us do that. Some of it is also working in strong partnerships with local authorities and with the GLA, and making sure we've got good grant funding to cross subsidise. Our biggest, if you like, benefit to that process is London Square, because London Square builds everything that we're going to take forward, so we do get the benefit of any of their build costs, their supply chain, all of the areas and skillsets in terms of planning and development, which we don't have to then go and recruit or employ directly, as a typical housing association would. We've got them there at hands' reach. So, it's a really good resource to help us do that and make things more viable. London Square is a growing business. So, as they grow, we will help them grow by bringing in more sites alongside the ones they're already doing. 

What would you say sets a Square Roots home apart from the others? 

I think it's definitely our focus on design and definitely the built environment. When we're looking at a scheme, we want to make sure that we're not just getting the design right for the project that we're building, but we're getting the design right for the environment that we're going to put the building or the community into. Quality specification is really key to us. We build homes that we would want to live in, irrelevant of whether they are for an affordable customer or not. We believe our customers should have the same kind of customer journey and experience as everybody has in the private sector. 

So, our shared ownership homes have that same purchasing experience as the private sales customer would, and our rented customers also get a tailored service from the nominations process all the way to the move in process. We've got a Customer Charter, which most housing associations don't have. We also establish customer community committees for every single project that we build, where our customers are basically members of those committees, and they can influence the services that we deliver to them, post-completion, once they've actually moved in. I think most traditional housing associations tend to have residents’ associations, but they tend to be quite wide and quite broad. Ours focus on their own communities and the communities that they're within, so that they can really influence their direct services. 

So here comes my slightly controversial, provocative question! Is London unaffordable? I'm happily from a generation where it was still possible to buy your own home, given wages and prices. Do you see that having dissipated? And also, what are your views about the ramifications for that - If you believe that is the case: that it's getting harder? 

I think it is unaffordable to a large percentage of the population. And if we think about what we need to keep London moving, and the people that we need to keep London moving,  it's not about people that earn a large salary, that maybe can afford a very nice market-rented property or a very nice private sale property in London. There are obviously pockets of London that are a lot more affordable than others, and a lot more accessible than others. But sometimes, you know, people will want to live close to where they work, so that makes that quite difficult in terms of location. I think London can be more affordable to people, certainly in terms of the product, so shared ownership and helping people get on the property ladder. There are not always positive ramifications on shared ownership, and that's a bit disappointing, because there's a lot of positive stories of people in shared ownership who then go on to become 100% home owners, which is what the system is set up for. I think we need to do a lot more for groups of society in London that don't sit in the category of getting help from a local authority, because they're on their waiting list to those people that can afford it. There's a big group of people in the middle that struggle with market rent and market rent values, and obviously with just getting a deposit, really. Some people could potentially afford the mortgage but not actually gain the deposit and get the deposit ready to buy a home. 

There are mechanisms, I think, for making it more affordable and getting people into the market. But I think there needs to be a reality check on the different groups of people and what they need. It's not just about private sale. It's not just about affordable. There is a submarket, rented sector I think that needs to evolve much better to make it more affordable for people –hard-working families who want to live and work in London. 

David Taylor 

So: final question, if you were mayor for the day and you had a magic wand, what would the swish of your wand entail in terms of making housing more affordable for all? What one thing would you do? 

I think that's a difficult question, because the mayor does not have as many powers as we think, certainly not in relation to market forces to make it more affordable, as much as we would like. I think there are things that could be done that the mayor maybe has powers over, in terms, certainly, of releasing more public sector land. I've been involved before in things like Community Land Trusts, not within London, but certainly outside of London, where the value of the land stays in the trust, and then you can actually sell homes for 70-80% of market value, and that's in perpetuity. So, when those people sell, the next people come in, they've always got that discount. The land always stays within the trust. If you could use that across some London local authorities, you would only really be able to do that if you're releasing public sector land, because obviously private landowners won't want that land value held in a trust somewhere. But that would be a way of making London more affordable for everyone, not just affordable housing. There are umpteen things the mayor can do and does do to make London affordable for affordable housing applicants and for housing associations like ours, in terms of grant funding and being able to release more of that into the sector, and also having cheaper financing costs. So, there are those aspects the mayor has control over. But I think for everyone, it's a tough one. He's got control over, obviously, London design standards, and I think they need a major review. Because there are aspects within those standards which are conflicting with updated building regs, if you like, that make buildings inefficient. So, if the buildings were more efficient and you could put more in them, and maybe even make them a little bit smaller, but better designed... 

Which aspect do you mean? Do you mean the dual aspect thing? 

Yes, dual aspect is quite a big issue. Its main reason for going in there in the first place was to enable better daylight, better ventilation, better thermal comfort and control in buildings. And most of those things now are dealt with through more updated Building Regs and technology. So, I think there are aspects like that that could be removed, could be changed, and that's just one of quite a few that would make it easier for house builders; make buildings more efficient, more cost-efficient, and therefore potentially more affordable. That's within his control to do that. I think it's long overdue. They tend to just change it around the edges but not give it a full review based on where we are about the legislation. 

Yes. Well, thank you so much for your time. I love that phrase, being ‘realistically optimistic’. That's a new one, and a good one to end on. So, thank you so much for your time, Barbara. 

Thanks, David!