South West housing associations work together to speed up delivery of new affordable homes
Bath-based Curo has announced it will work with South West housing associations Alliance Homes and Magna Housing to help speed up delivery of new homes in the region through its Strategic Partnership with Homes England. The funding arrangement was secured jointly with Swan Housing Association at the beginning of last year.
The Curo/Swan Strategic Partnership with the government’s housing agency consists of a grant allocation of £51.1m to build 1,067 new affordable homes across South West and South East England by March 2024, in addition to each partners’ existing development plans. The programme will comprise a mix of homes available for social rent, affordable rent and shared ownership.
Alliance Homes and Magna Housing will work alongside Curo as delivery partners to ensure these much-needed new affordable homes are made available as quickly as possible for people in the South West.
Curo are already working on three affordable housing developments that are part-funded by money from the Strategic Partnership. In Bristol, they’re delivering 14 new homes on a former disused garage site at Victoria Avenue, while works on another 32 affordable homes have just started in the city’s Old Market district. In North Somerset, 17 new homes will be delivered by November 2021 in Weston-super-Mare. Curo will start construction works on another 57-home affordable housing scheme in January next year, in the Lawrence Weston area of Bristol.
Curo Chief Executive, Victor da Cunha, said: “We’re delighted to announce our delivery partnership with Alliance and Magna. This is great news for people across our region who have been priced out of the housing market and who will benefit from the delivery of more new affordable homes, more quickly.
“We’re committed to working in partnership with the government’s housing agency, local authorities and our peers to build the homes our region needs. Alongside homes funded through the joint Curo/Swan Strategic Partnership with Homes England, Curo’s delivery pipeline will see the addition of almost 1,700 new homes in our region over the next five years.”
Alliance Homes and Curo operate across the same area in the West of England, including North Somerset, Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset.
Alliance Homes Chief Executive, Louise Swain, says: “This delivery partnership with Curo ensures we can continue to create more high-quality affordable homes for people who need them. This pipeline of grant funding will support our strategy of delivering 2,000 new homes over the next ten years.”
Magna Housing own and manage homes across Somerset and Dorset. Chief Executive Selina White says: “We’re excited to join this delivery partnership and help accelerate our affordable house-building programme. We’re looking at innovative solutions to help us build more and we’ve already ordered 45 high quality modular homes and more will be delivered through this strategic partnership with Homes England.”