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Your Housing Group to pull out of £2bn Chinese factory scheme
Your Housing Group will pull out of its joint venture to build homes offsite through a Chinese government-backed construction firm, the association has announced.
The board of the 28,000-home housing association has decided to exit its joint venture with renewable energy specialist Welink after plans to build modular homes did not develop as quickly as it had hoped.
The joint venture, Live Verde North West, was a partnership between Welink and Your Housing using £2bn of investment from China National Building Material Company.
Live Verde will continue in its national form as Welink’s UK modular housing development company but Welink has not confirmed whether it still aims to build 25,000 homes a year from six factories around the UK, as it originally planned.
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In a joint statement, Live Verde and Your Housing Group said: “Like many organisations that have announced plans to build offsite manufactured homes, we have not been able to bring forward our plans as quickly as we had hoped.
“In working to bring our plans to fruition we have to date been unable to unlock projects at agreed commercial terms that would enable us to build offsite manufactured homes in large numbers.”
Ajmal Rahman, chair of Welink, added: “We Link is disappointed to hear of the Your Housing Group board decision to withdraw from the joint venture, which we learned of [on Tuesday]. This was one element of our UK strategy to deliver offsite manufactured, energy-efficient housing in large numbers across all tenures.
“We Link remains committed to helping solve the UK housing crisis and our Chinese partners have recently reaffirmed their technical and financial support for our business and its partners. They have reaffirmed this support directly to the UK government and to UK housing.”
In December, Welink signed a memorandum of understanding with Swansea City Council to begin formal discussions for a modular housing pilot in the area.
Brian Cronin, chief executive of Your Housing, had previously told Inside Housing that homes from the association’s partnership with Welink should be “on site just after Christmas”.
Mr Cronin said: “We remain committed to exploring innovative ways to build more new homes across all tenure types, including social and affordable-rent homes. We passionately believe that modular and other modern methods of construction provide a new way forward for the housing sector.”
