The Government announced its proposals for a new agency - Communities England - to boost regeneration and housing delivery.
Communities England will bring together the functions of the Housing Corporation with those of English Partnerships and a range of work carried out by Communities and Local Government, including decent homes, housing market renewal, housing growth and urban regeneration.
Senior executives from the Housing Corporation, English Partnerships and the Department will form a transition team headed by Baroness Ford, working with the Government to plan for the proposed new organisation. During the transition period, individual agencies will continue to deliver their existing programmes.
Communities England will apparently aim to cut red tape and combine national scope with local effectiveness. It has a key objective to deliver more affordable housing and opportunities for people to gain a foot on the housing ladder. Working closely with local authorities, it is assigned the tasks of helping unlock more land for development, transforming failing estates and successfully creating places where people choose to live and stay.
The Housing and Regeneration Review was launched in April 2006 to assess the institutional structures for housing and regeneration delivery carried out by the Housing Corporation and English Partnerships.
In July the scope of the review was extended in three areas:
A separate review of the regulation of affordable housing, the Cave Review, was announced on 14 December 2006. This will look at how the regulatory system should be reformed to better support tenants, reduce burdens on social housing providers, and reflect current and future government priorities. It will report in Spring 2007.
The move to form the new agency devolves the Department's delivery functions in the areas of decent homes, housing growth, housing market renewal and regeneration, to Communities England.
A Testway Housing scheme could prove an inspiration to other social housing providers attempting to balance the need for affordable housing with 'carbon-neutral' aspirations.
The 5 houses and 12 flats in Andover have many features that help cut down on energy use, making them cheaper to run and better for the environment.
Solar panels on the south facing roofs provide heating, so residents should enjoy lower heating bills. Each unit includes a wood pellet boiler, to back up the solar powered heating. Wind cowls on the roof turn as the wind blows, bringing in fresh air without losing heat. And water butts store rainwater, which can then be used to maintain gardens.
Two two-bedroom homes and two three-bedroom homes will be sold through shared ownership, while the further 13 properties will be for rent. The project, which costs £3.1 million, is due to be completed this spring.
Shoreline Housing Partnership appointed Galliford Try PLC to develop a £46 million regeneration scheme on the Yarborough Estate, in Grimsby. Under the eight-year regeneration scheme, the company will provide 440 modern new properties, 40% of which will be social housing.
Galliford Try was also awarded a £25 million affordable housing contract by East Thames Housing Group, to provide 158 mixed-tenure residential units, as well as commercial and community space, in East London. Work is expected to start in December 2008.
Swan Housing Association selected Lovell for a £4.2 million homes development in Basildon. The scheme will include a three-storey block containing 23 self-contained one-bedroom flats, offering supported living accommodation for young mothers, aged up to 25, and their babies. The building will also include communal facilities and office accommodation.
Lovell will also build a separate three-storey building with ten flats for shared ownership, and a third block which will provide ten rented units and one shared-ownership unit.
All the new homes will achieve the EcoHomes excellent standard, the highest possible rating on the EcoHomes assessment system, which scores the properties' environmental performance. Environmentally friendly features incorporated into the design include high levels of thermal insulation.
An exhibition was held, providing an opportunity to see what Southwark Council has done over the last four years in regenerating the Elephant and Castle area.
The £1.5 billion regeneration is well underway, with residents from the 1960s Heygate Estate already moved into award winning new homes and planning approval granted for five new open spaces, a pedestrian friendly town centre and a new shopping and leisure space.
National regeneration agency English Partnerships, Sheffield City Council and developer Urban Splash announced completion of the formal agreements that will lead to the £146 million regeneration of Park Hill flats in Sheffield's city centre.
Regeneration of what is the UK's largest grade II listed building will provide nearly 900 modern, distinctive and well-designed homes for sale or rent.
English Partnerships and Sheffield City Council have signed an agreement under which English Partnerships has agreed a £14.8m grant towards the cost of redeveloping the flats.
Urban Splash has also signed a development agreement with Sheffield City Council under which it will carry out the work to renovate the landmark grade II listed buildings and make them home to a vibrant, mixed community.
Park Hill flats is the largest grade II listed building in Britain and is of international importance because of its scale, ambition and its building method of using "streets in the sky" to access the flats. It was a flagship of imaginatively and successfully designed local authority housing when it was completed in 1961. It was the first post-war slum clearance scheme of an entire community in Britain and the most ambitious inner-city development of its time.
By the late 1990s Park Hill had become run down and was no longer a popular place to live. The building suffered from a lack of maintenance and the Council was unable to modernise the homes to the "decent homes standard" that all social housing must reach by 2010.
Affordable housebuilder Lovell started work on a £2 million scheme to build 23 new affordable homes near Sudbury, Suffolk.
Lovell was selected by Flagship Housing Group to build 16 one- and two-bedroom flats and seven houses and bungalows - including a bungalow designed for disabled people. The mixed tenure scheme will comprise homes for affordable rent, shared ownership, and shared equity.
All the homes will achieve a very good rating on the Eco-Homes assessment scale for measuring environmental performance. The properties are being built using the advanced Space4 construction system, where floor cassettes and timber frame wall panels are manufactured off-site, in factory conditions, then assembled on site. This method enables consistently high quality standards to be achieved as well as faster construction times, high levels of energy-efficiency and less wastage.
Work commenced on a development to bring 12 new affordable homes to Dornoch. The development by Albyn Housing Society is being built in partnership with Tulloch Homes and will include six homes for affordable rent and six for sale through the Homestake shared-equity programme.
Tulloch purchased the site from the Highland Council with the condition that 12 affordable homes are built.
The Homestake scheme aims to help those with low incomes onto the property ladder. The homes will be available to people on low incomes to buy on a shared-equity basis with Albyn Housing Society.
Work got underway on a development to bring 10 new affordable homes to Croy, east of Inverness. The Cairn Housing Association scheme is part of a larger development of private homes being built by Scotia Homes.
The design of the project will see the affordable homes scattered throughout the larger development, fully integrating them with the private properties.
The land is being provided under the Highland Council's affordable housing planning policy, which guarantees a percentage of the housing built is affordable.
