So they wouldn't work with the Countryside Group?

Strategic partners, including Countryside, and most major housing associations know what grants they're getting for the next five years. This was determined in the last bid round.

So they wouldn't work with the Countryside Group?

The bid round would have been from 2020 to 2026, or rather 2021. Housing associations knew their grant allocation for five years. Homes England expects these associations to manage their grants to ensure, where possible, an even spend and to report back at the end of the five years that all grants have been spent. This is monitored yearly, in fact, quarterly. If anything goes wrong, it will be flagged early. Major housing associations prefer to use their own grants, unless they've used them up.

How do they profit from an affordable house that was built with grant money? They have this grant, they build the home, and then they can sell the home without having to pay anything for the land.

Yes, it might work out like that. Whether they receive the grant directly or the housing association receives the grant, usually what happens is that you have a land cost and a build cost for the affordable housing, and then there's a profit margin. That's what they'd like to see on their affordable housing. Then they approach a housing association and say, we need this amount per house to meet our criteria. The housing association, which has the grant, will have a portion of the grant which is nowhere near the full value. It's only about a third of what they would offer. The grant sum doesn't cover the whole amount.