Partners involved
- Homes England
- MCI Developments
- Halton Borough Council
Programme Costs
Total scheme costs: £10.5 million
Value of Affordable Homes Programme support for scheme: £1,775,000
Scheme size – 71 units
[30] Affordable Rent
[14] Shared Ownership
[17] Outright sale by housing association
[10] Other – Rent to Buy
Outcomes
Tannery Fields is helping to provide much needed homes to meet the government’s target of 300,000 extra homes required to meet housing demand each year. We believe that one of our fundamental roles as a housing association is to provide new additional homes. It’s also part of our investment of £60m in the provision of new homes.
This development, located on Picow Farm Road had been disused with overgrown vegetation for a number of years and a collaboration between MCI, Halton Borough Council and Halton Housing ensured that this development could proceed and regenerate a disused piece of land back into the community.
In addition, it has enabled Halton Housing to deliver a range of high quality property types to meet the local housing need, in particular bungalows and 4-bedroom houses.
Through the support of Homes England funding, Halton Housing has been able to bring this development forward offering a genuinely mixed tenure scheme, providing four different tenures and therefore, offering four different customer groups the opportunity to obtain a new home. Without this funding the opportunities to develop this would have been limited, leading to a far less inclusive housing scheme.
Lessons learnt
It was important to involve different parts of the organisation as early as possible to ensure engagement and feedback, for example, meeting with Property Services helped us agree a specification with the contractor that would help with efficient maintenance of these homes. This will not only help the business with reduced call outs, but also ensure new technologies are included in our developments where possible.
Each tenure needs to be designed and specified to take account of both the needs of customers and Halton Housing. It is therefore critical that the differences in these tenures are clearly set in the early design stages.
The scheme has been developed through a standard construction contract, which means the phasing of hand over of the completed properties, in a timely manner can have an negative impact on the sales. This process is critical and challenging and therefore, the developer/contractor needs to have a clear understanding of requirements and wherever possible, they need to be clearly defined within the contract.
“Halton Housing is committed to increasing the supply of affordable homes as well as continuing our investment in our existing homes. We have an ambitious growth and development programme, our aim is to build and acquire over 1000 homes by 2024. The investment in this development, through the Affordable Homes Programme, at a time when there is a significant national housing shortage, allows us to make a real difference to the provision of much needed high quality and genuinely affordable homes in this area”.
Paul Mullane, Director of Development & Growth, Halton Housing
Future plans
Halton Housing continues to identify the development of good quality, new build homes as a key strategic objective of the business, which is clearly set out within Our Direction. We see that the development of true mixed tenure schemes, both on our own and in partnership with other RP’s and Developers. It is a great way of providing new homes to the widest group of customers possible. This approach also reduces the stigmatisation of the social housing, by ensuring a more inclusive community.
We continue to deliver against our ambitious development programme to build and acquire 1000 additional new homes for rent, sale and shared ownership over the next 5 years. Currently we have a number of sites in the pipeline, including a 100 apartment Extra Care scheme providing the opportunity for customers to both purchase through Shared Ownership and rent through Affordable Rent.
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