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Homes England starts discussions on new partnerships
The government’s housing delivery agency has started talks with housing associations over a second wave of partnership deals.
Homes England announced eight strategic partnerships worth just under £590m with housing associations earlier this month in the first wave of its new way of working.
The second wave is not expected imminently, but Homes England has begun conversations with some of the organisations interested in bidding.
Nick Walkley, chief executive of Homes England, previously told Inside Housing that the second wave will include more organisations like the Matrix Partnership, a group of smaller housing associations that won funding in the first wave.
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A Homes England spokesperson told Inside Housing: “We’re starting to talk to people who were in wave one but didn’t quite get a deal and others, obviously have come forward since all the coverage.
“So we’re just working through that over the next few months, because we’re very keen to strike a new set of deals later this year.”
One chief executive of a large London housing association confirmed to Inside Housing that they have been speaking to Homes England about bidding for funding under the second wave.
The first wave of partnerships was aimed at delivering over 23,500 additional homes across all tenures from now through to March 2022. Of these, 14,280 – or 61% – will be affordable.
Under the scheme, Homes England’s partners have greater flexibility with how they use government grant. They are able to vary the specific tenure of their affordable homes as they near completion, with Homes England overseeing these variations.
Mr Walkley told Inside Housing that he expected associations to use this power to increase the number of homes they build for social rent.
The second wave will not necessarily follow the same structure as the first, with Homes England saying that it will look at “the lessons learned from the first wave of deals to see what flexibilities can be offered to site-by-site based bids”.
