The HRA is a ring fenced account pertaining to a local authority’s landlord functions for its tenants
This means funds should only be used for those purposes – but doesn’t mean that additional funds (General Fund, contributions from other organisations) can’t be used to supplement HRA funding
There is a separate grant for homelessness – £1.705m for 2025-26
Indirectly, the size of the HRA can be grown by raising rents – given a large % of this will be via housing or universal benefit (so pulls in income from the DWP budget)
Latest accounts show healthy surpluses in the past 2 years on the HRA, but the overall fund remains in a small deficit (pages 138-139 of those accounts)
HRA is almost half of the councils capital expenditure based on those accounts
National policy changes could expand the scope in the longer term. Under the current national policies, any extra capital investment (warmer homes, CPOs of empty homes etc.) would have to be funded from the HRA unless that came from the General Fund
Strategic agreements with NHS Trusts etc. would be the most immediate way to leverage extra income – prevented hospital visits etc which would then increase the funding available to for capital investment