Redrow Homes and Willmott Dixon – the later as LMH’s contractor – will jointly build 1,500 new homes. In addition, LMH will bring 1,000 currently empty ones back into use through refurbishment.
The ‘Building Our Future’ partnership, will run for an initial five years (2014 – 2019) with the option to extend for a further five years (2019 – 2024).
Redrow will develop private housing for sale and will identify and acquire land to enhance the council’s own development sites.
LMH will develop affordable housing by investing its own funding and by attracting grant funding. They will also be seeking to bring 1,000 empty properties back into use. Willmott Dixon will work on behalf of LMH to build new homes and refurbish properties to enable them to be brought back into use.
Liverpool City Council will provide strategic planning and housing need information, as well as selling surplus land to the partnership for development.
The council said that land and investment will be brought together in a planned way, with any capital receipts generated by the sale of council sites and assets reinvested back into the partnership.
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Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson launched the search for a Housing Delivery Partner last summer as part of his plans to work with public and private sector organisations to drive up the quality of housing in the city.
The partnership will carry out a review of the housing market across the city to identify development and refurbishment opportunities.
The two, full delivery programmes for each area of work – one for new-build and one for refurbishment – will be agreed by the partnership board, before being recommended to the council’s cabinet for approval in September this year.
Redrow Homes (Lancashire) managing director Steve Greenhalgh said: “We’re delighted to be part of a pioneering arrangement designed to deliver 2,500 much needed homes across the city. We’re particularly pleased that Redrow’s investment in private sale homes will help stimulate the creation of affordable housing, including the refurbishment of empty housing stock.
“The city-wide approach and joined-up thinking between the Council, Liverpool Mutual Homes and ourselves is what makes this project so exciting.”
LMH chief executive, Steve Coffey, said: “We’ve worked very closely with the council since it transferred 15,000 homes to us in 2008, raising the standard of housing significantly during our initial five-year, £400m improvement programme. We have continued this approach since with our first new build developments.”
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