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Speaker 1: In the country's biggest landlord has a turnaround plan kind

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Speaker 1: of order is going to refocus on simply building and

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Speaker 1: managing social housing. It plans to sell nine hundred homes

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Speaker 1: a year that are no longer fit for purpose and

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Speaker 1: renew older homes that it needs to. Overall, the numbers

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Speaker 1: won't reduce the payoff. Well, debt will be down one

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Speaker 1: point eight billion dollars in twenty twenty seven twenty eight

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Speaker 1: compared to the twenty twenty three forecast. Bord chair Simon

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Speaker 1: Murder is with me this evening, Simon, good evening. Yeah, ah, yeah, right,

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Speaker 1: building and managing social housing. Was that not an obvious

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Speaker 1: focus for this outfit?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think so, and just it's you know, an

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Speaker 2: organization is always going to function better when it's got

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Speaker 2: a very clear and reasonably narrow purpose in mandate and

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Speaker 2: things that you know, we ended up over the last

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Speaker 2: few years having a wide range of mandates and that

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Speaker 2: that can distract you know, your top team, your attention,

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Speaker 2: your resources. And so I'm confident that as we narrow

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Speaker 2: the mandate back down and we focus on the core functions,

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Speaker 2: will do a much better job.

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Speaker 1: The number of social houses won't fall, but will it

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Speaker 1: go up, you know, will it meet the demand of

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Speaker 1: the wait list?

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Speaker 2: Between now and June twenty twenty six, will continue to

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Speaker 2: grow the total number of social housing and we'll reach

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Speaker 2: a level of around seventy eight thousand social houses by

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Speaker 2: June twenty twenty six, and from that point on, unless

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Speaker 2: the Government instructs us to add further to the total

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Speaker 2: housing stock, will run the business with one in and

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Speaker 2: one out approach and that will result in around in

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Speaker 2: nineteen hundred to two thousand construction events, some of which

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Speaker 2: are replacing, you know, knocking down old houses and replacing

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Speaker 2: them with new and others being fully refurbished, so relifing

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Speaker 2: a home. But that would be the the process from there,

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Speaker 2: and the government has signaled that it wants to explore

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Speaker 2: the possibility of future growth in social housing coming from

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Speaker 2: the community housing provider sector, who are very good at

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Speaker 2: what they do and provide some very good care services,

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Speaker 2: and we're very supportive of that.

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Speaker 1: Logic it means you'll be building houses. Have you got

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Speaker 1: to the bottom of why Coming of Order was paying

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Speaker 1: on average twelve percent more for new builds than the

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Speaker 1: private market.

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Speaker 2: A number of reasons, actually not the least of which

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Speaker 2: was a very aggressive increase in the requirement to build houses.

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Speaker 2: And you know, last in twenty twenty four financial year

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Speaker 2: we built we built nearly six thousand, So it's those

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Speaker 2: are enormous numbers, and so when you work at that pace,

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Speaker 2: it does push a lot of inefficiency into the business.

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Speaker 2: You have to make choices that you otherwise wouldn't to

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Speaker 2: deliver that sort of a number and shouldn't give you

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Speaker 2: economies a lot, shouldn't give your economies scale and things cheaper. No,

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Speaker 2: it's just delivered at such speed and you're pulling on

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Speaker 2: so many resources. As the opposite occurs, you've become inefficient

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Speaker 2: with they had to make more sites, election choices and things.

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Speaker 2: So partly inefficiency, and then a little bit to do

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Speaker 2: with the design standards and the specks which had got

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Speaker 2: probably further than they needed to be in terms of

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Speaker 2: specificity beyond what would be seen as a normal market

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Speaker 2: build for an affordable home. And so we're already resetting

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Speaker 2: some of those specifications just to bring them a bit

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Speaker 2: closer to a regular build. Social housing does require some

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Speaker 2: features that that normal market housing doesn't, but it doesn't

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Speaker 2: need to cost hundreds of thousands more. It should only cost,

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Speaker 2: you know, teaching the low tens of thousands more in

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Speaker 2: a unit.

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Speaker 1: Simon, thank you very much for your time, Simon Mousa.

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Speaker 1: They're kind of order board share. For more from Hither

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Speaker 1: Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to Newstalk SETB from four

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