Affordable housing

£163m affordable housing fund made available to English communities



A £163m fund has been launched by the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government James Brokenshire to build new community-led affordable housing.


The Community Housing Fund is available to community-led groups across England to support the delivery of new affordable homes up to 31st March 2020.

Funding outside of London is being led by Homes England, while funding for London will be delivered by the Greater London Authority.

The fund will be run in two phases, with phase one assisting community groups with applications for revenue grants for the pre-development stage of community-led housing projects.

Bidding is open to all organisations which are constituted as a body corporate or intend to become so.

It will also allow local authorities to bid for capital funding for small-scale infrastructure projects.

Phase two of the fund will be launched later this year.

Nick Walkley, chief executive at Homes England, said: “Community-led housing is about local people playing a leading role in solving local housing problems to provide affordable homes and strengthen communities in ways that aren’t always possible to achieve through mainstream housing.”

Homes England has been created to take a more commercial approach to the housing issues in the UK.

It plans to play a leading role in helping to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the next decade, an increase on the 217,000 new homes built in 2017.

“At Homes England, we’re determined to increase the supply of homes across all tenures and increase capacity in the housing sector,” added Nick. 

“This is a really important fund, which will offer lasting impact and we look forward to receiving bids from community groups across England.”



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