Date published: 28 June 2019
Communities Secretary, James Brokenshire, made the announcement in Manchester at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s annual conference, Housing 2019. Stonewater is keen to explore bidding for the new funding round, which will fund homes built from March 2024 to March 2029.
Mr Brokenshire said that the £1bn would be available for existing Homes England Strategic Partners to fund homes using modern methods of construction and ideally built on brownfield sites.
Stonewater, in partnership with Guinness, is one of 23 Homes England Strategic Partners, with £224 million awarded in October 2018 to begin building 4,500 high-quality, affordable homes by 2022.
Nicholas Harris, Chief Executive of 32,000-home Stonewater, said: “This £1bn to extend the Strategic Partnership initiative is very welcome news. We are pleased with the progress we have already made on our significant development pipeline to deliver thousands more social and affordable homes. Further funding over the longer-term will absolutely allow us to continue pushing ourselves to invest in more strategic land and explore modern methods of construction to maximise our housing delivery in communities across England where it is needed most.”
Under the existing Strategic Partnership, Stonewater and Guinness are already extending and accelerating their development plans, bringing forward the building of affordable and social housing.
As a result of the certainty of grant funding from Homes England, strategic partners are able to enter into longer-term commitments to buy additional land, targeting areas of greatest housing need.
The Guinness and Stonewater strategic partnership is the largest of the deals announced by Homes England with housing association partners to deliver more of the homes needed to address the housing crisis affecting people and communities across the country.