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£6 million investment in new homes

A housing association has received funding of £1.75 million to put towards the cost of building dozens of new homes over the next few years.

Railway Housing Association is to build 44 new, affordable homes in County Durham, East Riding and Darlington between now and 2021.

The Association, which is approaching its centenary year in 2019, has received grant funding of £1.75 million from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) – the Government body that funds new homes in England.

This funding has come from the HCA’s Shared Ownership and Affordable Homes Programme, which is aimed at kick-starting the building of homes that people can afford in the UK.

Railway will invest a further £4.5 million of its own money to build the homes. The actual sites will be determined at a later date.

Anne Rowlands, Chief Executive of Railway Housing Association, said: “We are delighted to have received funding to enable us to proceed with the building of new homes in areas where we already have a significant number of properties.

“We are currently on site building 73 homes in Darlington, at a cost of £8 million, so with the 44 extra properties that we will now also be providing over the next few years, this represents one of our biggest housebuilding programmes in recent history.

“Many of these homes will be completed by 2019, which will be our 100th anniversary year, and we look forward to welcoming new residents to the Association.”

The funding Railway Housing Association has received from the HCA forms part of a £7 billion Government programme aimed at meeting the diverse housing needs of the country.

In total, over 200,000 new homes will be built during the life of the programme. It comes just weeks after the Government admitted in its new White Paper that the housing market is “broken” and that the solution is more housebuilding.

Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) Chairman Sir Ed Lister said: “The expanded affordable housing programme will help us continue to work with both housing associations and developers new to this area of the housing market to increase the availability of affordable homes.

“The expanded programme will also allow providers the flexibility and agility to respond to local needs and markets. This will boost housebuilding by encouraging providers to deliver a mix of homes for both affordable rent and low-cost ownership that is most suited to each place.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Neil Shaefer .