Developer predicts 'transformational decade' for affordable housing

A developer has predicted a transformational decade for affordable housing after £9.58 billion was announced to deliver 73,600 new homes across England including £409 million for the West Midlands.

SH Partnerships, which is based in Wolverhampton and the partnership housing arm of Shropshire Homes, said that although the funding was vital, it was the timescale attached to it - a 10-year runway - that would accelerate affordable housing delivery across the country.

SH Partnerships works with a number of registered providers to deliver affordable homes for sale and social rent across Shropshire and Staffordshire.

It currently has plans to build more than 300 homes on sites in Shropshire and Staffordshire, with a number of planning applications submitted.

Managing director Chris Timmins said previous national funding programmes had run on five-year cycles or shorter, often leaving providers unable to commit to sites while they waited to see if the next pot of funding would arrive in time.

He said: "I've watched good schemes stall for no reason other than funding uncertainty. A 10-year settlement is the difference between a scheme and a stalled site.

"This funding and the 10-year timescale could see a transformational decade for the delivery of affordable and council housing across the country. But money on its own doesn't build a single home.

“It needs land, planning expertise and a partner who can deliver. We know that the partnership model works and it's good to see that registered providers as well as councils are being backed to deliver what's needed."

Homes England has named the 33 strategic partners chosen to share the funding, a mix of housing associations and, for the first time, councils outside London.

The West Midlands is to get an extra £409 million to provide 3,200 new homes for people in temporary accommodation or on housing waiting lists.

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Regional mayor Richard Parker said: "For decades, there's been a chronic underinvestment in council homes and genuinely affordable housing and it's left us with the housing crisis we face today.

"I believe people deserve better which is why my focus has been on fixing the mistakes of the past and rebuilding our housing stock.

"We've already started turning around years of underinvestment in social housing but the Prime Minister's announcement will see us work together as a region and take this social housing mission to the next level."

PM Andy Burnham said: "No child should be raised in a hostel room and no family should wait ten years for a front door of their own.

"Nearly £10 billion will go to councils and housing associations to build genuinely affordable homes, most of them for social rent, in the places where families are waiting longest."