L&Q well-placed to tackle financial challenges that lie ahead

With gloomy headlines about the economy every day and continuing uncertainty about how long the credit crunch is going to last, Chief Executive David Montague has explained how L&Q is responding to the challenges ahead.

David said: "The credit crunch is now affecting everyone, from small businesses to major international banks, and Governments across the world are having to put together multi-billion pound packages to respond to market worries.

"Organisations involved in housing are among those affected, so L&Q has a responsibility to remain financially strong so we can continue to provide top quality homes and services for our existing and future residents.

"The good news is that L&Q is financially very strong. Because we are a not-for-profit organisation, we don’t have shareholders to satisfy, we are not directly affected by the ups and downs of the stock market and we can continue to re-invest every single penny of our surplus back into creating places where people want to live.

"We have always been very careful at L&Q to ensure that the money we collect from residents covers our investment in your homes. We are not dependent on any other source of finance to provide our management and maintenance service.

"At L&Q we remain committed to providing new affordable homes, but we will tread very carefully until the economic outlook improves. We have always taken a long-term view to running our business and so we already have the Government grant and guaranteed bank loans in place to comfortably cover the cost of our development programme for the next three years, and we can be confident that our plans to grow are sustainable.

"Over the last few years we have created mixed communities and raised extra funds by providing some homes for sale as well as for rent. In the coming months the money we make from outright sales is likely to be affected by the housing market slowdown, so we are doing a number of things to make sure we respond to this challenge:

• We have taken a close look at all of our development projects and we are confident that we have the capability to deliver whilst retaining our strong financial position. Moving forward, we still aim to grow, but new developments will be assessed carefully to ensure that existing residents and their homes remain our key priority.
• We are working closely with Government and other key stakeholders to ensure that local and national housing policy takes account of our views and experience.
• We are developing new products to maintain our position as a leading affordable housing provider.

"We have always been very careful to make sure that L&Q is not dependent on sales income, and even if we don’t sell any more homes this year we will still make a surplus to reinvest in homes and services.

"Nobody can predict how long the current difficulties are going to be with us for, but with careful management and creative working it will be business as usual at L&Q."

Print

Email to a friend