Colleagues in housing and treasury management are currently immersed in the accounting implications of housing revenue account (HRA) reform, and getting to grips with issues such as the apportionment and splitting of debt and, more trickily, how to apply depreciation within the HRA.

In our recent consultation there was broad support for options put forward for splitting debt, but more questions arose from the proposed solution for depreciation. Depreciation can easily be dismissed as a purely accounting issue but, as the responses show, as soon as it is proposed to hit the bottom line, it really matters.