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More housing associations reveal delivery partners for Homes England bids

Several housing associations named last week on the Homes England strategic partnership list have revealed that they have recruited other landlords to help them complete their promised quota of new homes.

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Housing associations reveal several extra partners for strategic partnership bids #ukhousing

Strategic partners that will collectively receive more than £1bn in government grant through the programme have told Inside Housing they have teamed up with a number of smaller partner associations to help them build the promised homes, which total nearly 25,000.

Last week, 20,700-home Accent revealed it had added three partners – Habinteg, Leeds Federated and PA Housing – to help it deliver the 3,300 homes pledged, in exchange for £210m of funding.

At least eight other landlords have now told Inside Housing that their bids to Homes England are based on similar arrangements, some of which involve working with smaller or specialist associations.

Under the rules of the strategic partnership scheme, named partners can bring in additional delivery partners as part of their bids. In previous funding rounds, partnerships have also been able to add partners to their bids during the time period.

Together Housing, which manages 36,000 homes in the North of England, will deliver its 4,047 homes – backed by £249.9m of Homes England money – with Wakefield’s WDH, Bradford-based Incommunities and Preston’s Community Gateway.

A spokesperson said each delivery partner would be allocated approximately 140 grant-funded units per annum. “This will be in line with the capability of each partner to meet their own programme delivery [with] the flexibility to increase or decrease as circumstances allow,” the spokesperson said.

National housing association Orbit has also recruited partners, with Saffron Housing and Trent & Dove partnering the 45,000-home landlord, which received £103m to build 1,500 homes.


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Elsewhere, 35,000-home Onward Homes, which works across the North West, is teaming up with Progress Housing Group, the supported living provider which will deliver about 600 out of 3,208 homes. Homes England has awarded it £152m.

“We believe working in partnership with others will benefit communities across the region,” said Sandy Livingstone, the executive director of property at Onward Homes.

On the other side of the Pennines, 30,000-home Karbon Homes will work with York Housing Association (YHA), its subsidiary. A spokesperson for Karbon said YHA was expected to deliver around 4% of the 2,200 homes it had agreed with Homes England, in exchange for £131.5m of funding.

In the Midlands and East of England, the joint £230m award to 23,500-home Longhurst Group and 10,000-home Nottingham Community Housing Association (NCHA) will mean a proportion of 3,935 new homes built by three delivery partners.

Midlands-based landlords EMH and Midland Heart, which secured £171.7m, will be using Futures Housing Group as a delivery partner, with the 10,000-home landlord committing to build 500 of the 1,750 promised units.

GreenSquareAccord will be working with a number of housing associations that are part of the Matrix Partnership as part of its plan to start 3,775 homes across the next five years. The Matrix Partnership is a consortium of seven associations formed 18 years ago, and includes other Midlands-based landlords, including GreenSquareAccord, Rooftop Housing, Citizen, Trident Group, Black Country Housing Group, The Pioneer Group and WATMOS Community Homes.

Last time, the group bid under the name the Matrix Partnership, with Accord the lead partner, and secured £77m to start 2,257 homes. WM Housing was also added to the strategic partnership in 2019.

Longhurst is teaming up with Lincoln-based LACE Housing, which specialises in homes for people aged over 55, and Norfolk’s Freebridge Community Housing.

NCHA will work with Tuntum, a small BME-led association also headquartered in Nottingham.

And in the South of England, Curo – which is sharing a £160m award with Swan Housing – will continue an arrangement with Magna and Alliance. Curo declined to comment on how many of the 2,425 homes it has agreed with Homes England would be delivered by the two smaller South West associations.

Organisations accounting for nine other Homes England allocations told Inside Housing they had no plans to work with delivery partners.

These included housing associations Flagship, Metropolitan Thames Valley, Platform, Riverside, Sovereign, Thirteen, Vivid, and Guinness and Stonewater, which submitted a joint bid.

Also delivering its new housing without assistance is McCarthy Stone, the private retirement specialist. It is the first such organisation to become a Homes England partner and will develop 1,500 properties via a £94m grant.

The strategic partnership is with the company’s shared ownership arm, McCarthy Stone (Shared Ownership) Ltd, which became a registered provider earlier this year. Most of the new homes will be in the Midlands and North of England, with McCarthy Stone claiming in a statement that the money would allow it to deliver its Older Persons Shared Ownership Scheme at scale.

Bill Yardley, chair of McCarthy Stone (shared ownership), said: “Now with the backing of Homes England, we can help to better serve the diverse needs of the UK’s ageing population around the country and give them the opportunity to live in a more supported environment, including on-site care, across a wide range of budgets.”

McCarthy Stone was not the only for-profit provider to make the strategic partnership list this year, with Legal and General Affordable Homes, Sage and Vistry all securing cash through the programme. L&G said it had around 15 partners that it would be delivering its promised homes with, and these included Vistry, Lovell Partnerships, Godwin Developments, Larkfleet, Autograph Homes and L&G Modular Homes.

It added that it would also be working with a number of SME builders and would be looking to increase the proportion of homes delivered through them, particularly those that specialise and have skills in delivering low-carbon and energy-efficient housing.

Sage also said that it would be looking to form partnerships, but hadn’t agreed any yet.

Vistry Partnerships, which already delivers projects with a number of local authorities and associations, said that, as well as working with its own partners, it would also be looking to partner up with RPs that were not strategic partners, to deliver more homes.

Inside Housing has contacted the remaining 11 associations for details, and this story will be updated as more information comes in.

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