The government have announced a brand new £18 million fund to help speed up the building of new homes of large development sites, reports UK trade publication Show House.
The new cash, outlined by the Housing Minister Gavin Barwell, will allow councils to bid for a share of the ‘capacity fund’ to tackle planning issues that can cause delay and prevent builders from getting on site and starting work quickly.
The fund is intended to aid in accelerating the delivery of up to 800,000 new homes to market, along with other associated infrastructure elements. It is part of a wider package of measures to increase the number of much needed homes in local areas, according to a Government statement.
“We want to turbo-charge house building on large sites to get the homes built in the places people want to live, so that this country works for everyone, not just the privileged few,” said Barwell. “These sites offer enormous potential to transform brownfield land into new homes and our £18 million funding will help get them built much sooner.
Furthermore, we are getting behind plans for a new Garden Town which offers a unique opportunity to boost the local economy, jobs and provide new homes in Shepway, Kent.”
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The primary target of the new fund will be sites encompassing more than 1,500 units and Housing Zones, which encourage building on brownfield sites where councils work in partnership with private developers to deliver thousands of new homes. An additional measure in the package of reforms is the provision of six new Housing Zones to provide 10,000 new homes on brownfield land.
There are now more than 26 Housing Zones across the country which will help deliver 44,000 homes, with an additional 31 designated within London.
