Developers challenged as £300m homes fund launched

COUNCIL chiefs have challenged developers to double the rate of home building within the next 20 years to meet soaring demand.

This was at the launch of the pioneering £300m GM Housing Fund which aims to deliver 220,000 new homes within the next 20 years.

Chair of Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Housing and Planning Commission Cllr Sue Darbyshire said: “This is an exciting day. The fund will help us create not just units and houses but the homes and real communities of the future.”

Speaking at the launch of the Fund, Eamonn Boylan, GMCA lead on housing and planning, said it was: “The culmination of hard work and the beginning of something really exciting.”

He said a spatial framework detailing land use for housing and employment was being finalised for publication in 2017 and would be a “framework for growth”.

He told the audience at City Labs in Manchester: “No-one has done this before and it will give real confidence to developers and investors, showing our united approach across the region. Couple this with the £300m we have to invest in viable housing schemes and it shows a real commitment to get things done.

“I am very, very excited about this and developers should know that the fund is open for business.”

The audience of more than 150 heard from two developers who have previously accessed public funding to get residential schemes underway.

Tony McCaul, director of Astley based McCaul Homes, received £4m under the Get Britain Building scheme for The Point in New Islington, 117 apartments and town houses all for private sale.

Nigel Rawlings, of CS Capital Partners received £7.9m under the country’s first Build to Rent scheme to refurbish three redundant tower blocks into 192 new homes.

Both said they will be submitting new projects for funding under the GMCA initiative.

Funding is fully recoverable and Bill Enevoldson, Chief Investment Officer for the Combined Authority, said they would be looking for viable projects that had the support of the relevant local authority.

He urged the audience: “If you have a housing scheme come and talk to us. Our aim is to get the money out, get it repaid in then get it back out again. We want to work quickly.”

He said three projects were already on the table, two looking for £10m and the third for £25m and that it was hoped to have £40m out on loan by March next year.

He said: “I would hope we would have the first successful scheme announced in the next couple of weeks and another mid August.”

Loan funding is fully recoverable and it is estimated that the money could be used 2.5 times over the fund’s 10 year life, delivering a total residential development value of £1.5bn.

The Housing Fund was set down under the devolution agreement and Manchester City Council Chief Executive, Sir Howard Bernstein said: “Devolution is about growth and reform and the housing investment fund is one of the key principles.

“We wanted to create a programme to facilitate house building and help us leverage in private sector investment.”