Image: Dreamstime/Alexander Kondriianenko
The government housing agency Homes England has agreed £38.2m in funding with six local authorities to speed up the delivery of more than 2,000 homes across the country.
The deals will be awarded through the government’s £350m Local Authority Accelerated Construction (LAAC) programme, which was launched to unlock public land and increase the speed of delivery on local authority schemes.
Local authorities receiving funding are encouraged to use modern methods of construction (MMC) from factory-fabricated components to modular construction – as well as local SMEs.
New sites set to benefit from LAAC funding include land at Locking Parklands, Weston-Super-Mare, where North Somerset Council will receive over £9.8m of LAAC funding for infrastructure to bring forward 425 new homes, at least 30% of which will be affordable. Another of the sites, in Winsford, Cheshire, will benefit from over £4.5m LAAC funding to accelerate the construction of 310 homes, including a 60-home extra care scheme.
The deals in the South are with: North Somerset Council Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council, Bristol City Council and Hastings Borough Council. In the North, they are with: Hull City Council, Cheshire West and Chester Council.
Stephen Kinsella, chief land and development officer at Homes England, said: “This funding will enable local authorities to prepare their sites for development and to bring forward the construction of homes. New homes will then be built out at pace using modern methods of construction.”
