Posted 27.06.14
Communities across the country are set to benefit from thousands of extra homes under new deals revealed by the Government.
Speaking at the Chartered Institute for Housing conference in Manchester, Communities Secretary Eric Pickles set out why housing is the cornerstone of Britain's economic strength and social well-being.
He said considerable progress has been made to fix the broken housing market, but that there is still more to do and Government will continue to get the country building more homes.
The Secretary of State announced millions of pounds of investment across a range programmes, to boost the supply of new homes in all areas of the housing market:
Over £53 million will accelerate construction of more than 7,000 homes on large developments in Manchester, Medway, Swindon and Kettering.
The new deals will bring the total number of homes supported through the Local Infrastructure Fund to over 80,000 since the scheme began in 2012.
The Government has set aside £1 billion over the next 5 years for further rounds of the programme. So far 56 bids have been received, which demonstrate the strong interest from developers in getting workers back on stalled large-scale sites and to deliver the homes.
An announcement about the shortlisted bids for the first round of funding will be made later in the summer.
A new £3 million fund will help planning authorities tackle barriers to work starting on site - the fund will give authorities additional capacity to focus on issues such as finalising section 106 agreements and signing off planning conditions, to help get work started on sites as quickly as possible.
The fund could accelerate starts on up to 85 sites with the potential for up to 25,000 homes.
A new prospectus for a new £150 million investment fund for 10,000 'serviced plots' will be published. The funding will help bring forward 'shovel ready' sites where people can hire a developer to build the home they want, a type of development known as custom build.
A demonstration site at Park Prewett, near Basingstoke, will begin shortly.
Posted 12.06.14
The latest release on the supply of homes delivered by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) in England, excluding London except for delivery of programmes managed by the HCA on behalf of the Greater London Authority, have just been released.
The key points are:
There were 38,845 housing starts on site and 34,461 housing completions delivered through programmes managed by the HCA in England (excluding London for all programmes except those administered by the HCA) in 2013-14.
These figures exclude delivery under the Help to Buy programme.
25,486 affordable homes started in 2013-14 were for Affordable Rent, an increase of 39% on 2012-13.
A further 4,738 were for Intermediate Affordable Housing schemes, including shared ownership and equity loan, an increase of 1% on 2012-13, and the remaining 2,638 were for Social Rent, a decrease of 11% on 2012-13.
The Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) 2011-15 accounted for 87% of the affordable homes started in 2013-14.
17,094 affordable homes completed in 2013-14 were for Affordable Rent, an increase of 160% compared to 2012-13.
A further 6,062 were for Intermediate Affordable Housing schemes, including shared ownership and equity loan, a decrease of 51% on 2012-13, and the remaining 4,487 were for Social Rent, a decrease of 53% on 2012-13.
The AHP 2011-15 accounted for 83% of the affordable homes completed in 2013-14.
