The trend for housing associations to merge in a bid to reduce their costs and increase the amount of new housing they can build, shows no sign of abating. In the Midlands a new 45,000 home landlord called Platform Housing Group has been formed as a result of Waterloo Housing Group and Fortis Living joining forces.

The new organisation has a development pipeline of 18,000 homes to be built over the next ten years. Meanwhile Metropolitan and Thames Valley have also completed their merger, bringing some 57,000 homes together.

They hope to build 2,000 new homes a year, adding to their existing stock in London, the south east, east of England and the East Midlands. In London and the south east Catalyst and Aldwyck are in talks to form a 30,000 association with a completion date of next April. As a combined landlord they hope to build at least 1,300 homes a year across the capital and the home counties. Aldwyck took over Cambridgeshire based King Street Housing earlier this year. Interestingly or coincidentally two of the mergers involve chief executives who have been bosses at both organisations involved.

Geeta Nanda was CEO of Thames Valley before moving to Metropolitan, while Ian McDermott recently left Aldwyck to take over the leadership of Catalyst from Rod Cahill.

By Patrick Mooney, editor