Bromford selected to be a strategic partner

Bromford has been confirmed as one of Homes England’s new strategic partners, allowing us to deliver 1,400 affordable homes across our Midlands and South West operating area.

Communities and Local Government Secretary James Brokenshire made the announcement at a building summit in London this morning (Thursday 30th January) as part of a further wave of strategic partnerships designed to enable housing associations to “up its game” and get more homes of all tenures built more quickly. Another seven strategic partners are included in the latest announcement and means Bromford will receive an additional £66m to invest in new social rented, affordable rented and shared ownership homes.

A bid for the funding was prepared in October 2018 and following our success the 44,000-home organisation is expected to be able to secure grant at a level that allows us to purchase more land for our own development, and subsequently reduce our reliance on Section 106.

Local demand

Executive director of new homes, Martyn Blackman, commented: “We are very excited to embark on what is a new, closer relationship with Homes England which takes another important step towards securing the long-term delivery of affordable housing right across England. The government has shown a real desire to work with ambitious housing providers and today’s announcement gives us all far greater long-term certainty allowing Bromford and others to further accelerate our land-led housebuilding programmes to deliver the homes our future customers need.

“Bromford has recently brought three organisations together in order to cement our financial strength and housebuilding capability and today’s Homes England announcement really demonstrates our commitment to investing in the communities we serve and will help us strengthen the relationships we have with the people living in those communities.”

Sir Edward Lister, Homes England chairman, added: “I welcome the new strategic partners who share our ambition to build better homes faster. Our new ways of working with the sector mean that housing associations can use their funding flexibly across their development programmes and respond quickly to local housing demand and a changing market.”

It comes just weeks after the merger of Severn Vale with Bromford as new CEO Robert Nettleton reaffirmed the organisations commitment to invest £1.5bn in 14,000 new homes over the next decade.