One Vision Housing’s ‘financial viability’ downgraded

The Social Housing Regulator has published 43 regulatory judgements, the last round of assessments before the end of the year.

INSIDEHOUSING broke the news of One Vision Housing’s downgrade.

Bootle-based One Vision Housing (OVH) was the only association to have its financial viability downgraded, with the association being moved from a V1 to a V2 grading.

In layman’s terms V2 means that OVH presently meets the requirements on viability set out in the Governance and Financial Viability standard but needs to manage material financial exposures to support continued compliance. However, any slippage to V3 or V4 would be far more serious.

Any provider’s financial viability, if V4 was reached, would raise serious concerns and be subject to regulatory intervention or even official enforcement action.

More details

https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/regulatory-judgements-six-associations-get-upgrades-in-last-assessments-before-year-end-64576

This latest judgement said there was a “reasonable range of adverse scenarios” faced by OVH, including two one-off spends relating to fire safety works and a pension deficit payment, which it suggested will impact significantly on the company’s interest cover in 2019/20.

Limited OVH ability to respond to adverse effects

The 2019 business plan shows interest cover will strengthen in 2020/21, but until then One Vision’s capacity to “respond to adverse events is reduced,” according to the judgement.