More than £52m reserved for social housing at risk after collapse of investment firms

Key points

• More than £52m in public money earmarked for social housing is at risk after the partial collapse of one of the England’s fastest-growing housing providers.
• Two of the investment companies run by the Heylo Housing group, which is backed by the asset managers BlackRock, have gone into administration, leaving the government regulator scrambling to find a rescue deal to protect taxpayers’ money and prevent 3,500 social homes switching to the private sector.
• The saga has exposed serious flaws in a deregulation of housing conducted by the previousgovernment and has raised questions about attracting new investors into social housing, and giving public money to for-profit companies.
• It has also set an unprecedented challenge for the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) which oversees the landlords of 2.9m social homes, and risks tarnishing its record of never having lost a single property or any public money to a financial default.
• One of the...