£497 million worth of additional housing funding will be made available to local housing associations this year to create more affordable housing. The money will be used to fund the construction of 11,000 homes within the next three years.
Following recent speculation at the Council for Licensed Conveyancers’ annual conference that more consideration and use of Modern Methods of Construction will be needed in future housing projects, Brokenshire announced an innovative project using off-site modular homes.
The £9 million investment will see 78 rooftop homes built off-site and constructed on five sites in London over the next three years.
It is hoped that the money and new approaches to building will substantially increase the affordable housing stock in desirable locations.
The news comes a day before the House of Lords met (January 31st) to discuss social housing.
The Lords debate, made at the request of Lord Best, former chair of the Affordable Housing Commission, spend a huge section of the day discussing a case for the long-term commitment to increasing social housing provision which should then reduce housing costs, housing benefit expenditure and homelessness.
James Brokenshire, Communities Secretary, said: “By providing targeted investment in affordable homes, and funding innovative projects to build rooftop properties, we are making our housing market work for everyone.
“Our £500m funding boost for housing associations will help them build thousands of extra affordable homes – including properties for social rent.”
Sir Edward Lister, Homes England chairman, commented: “I welcome the new strategic partners who share our ambition to build better homes faster.
“Our new ways of working with the sector means that housing associations can use their funding flexibly across their development programmes and respond quickly to local housing demand and a changing market.”
Whilst Brokenshire was keen to share the successes of building 220,000 homes in 2018 and increasing output by 2%, the government will need to continue innovating and using MMC in order to stand any chance of reaching the 300,000 new homes per year that has been promised.
Will the concept of rooftop modular homes make it more difficult to obtain a mortgage? What will ideas like this mean for the conveyancing sector?
