Buckinghamshire Council

Overview

In April 2020, the ownership of Consilio, a wholly owned arms-length company, transferred to the new unitary Buckinghamshire Council. With the ongoing national affordable housing crisis and local housing pressures, Laura was appointed to evaluate the Council’s future role in affordable and specialist housing delivery, and assess whether Consilio remained a viable option.

An early review of the context to affordable housing supply and demand identified a strong strategic need for intervention to address Buckinghamshire’s severe housing challenges. Objectives were defined to guide the evaluation of delivery options, focusing on supply quantity and quality, pace of delivery, location priorities, long-term benefits, market failure, and value for money.

Laura’s team discussed and appraised different intervention options to potentially address the strategic need and found that Consilio could play a key role in acquiring, developing (via joint ventures with registered providers or private developers), and retaining non-statutory affordable housing.

However, while the existing Consilio model had potential, a number of shortcomings and challenges were identified that would require investment and operational realignment.  Laura therefore prepared a business case following 5-Case Model methodology to clearly explain why there was a need for change (intervention), what outcomes the intervention would need to deliver, options for potentially meeting the deliverables, commercial marketplace dynamics, financial and affordability considerations, and how a preferred future model (Consilio) could be brought forward.

The business case was presented to Council Officers in 2023.