Greater Manchester housing set for £300M fund boost

Manchester City Council has launched a £300M fund to unlock stalled residential schemes across Greater Manchester that will create up to 220,000 homes over the next two decades.

The Greater Manchester Housing Fund was formed as part of the region’s devolution agreement and is fundamental to Manchester’s ambition to build a range of high quality homes of various types and tenures.

The Council are encouraging developers to take advantage of the funding and begin building.

Chief Investment Officer for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), Bill Enevoldson, said: “Access to public funds can be the crucial piece of the financial jigsaw and help get vital housing schemes started.

“It is not designed to finance unviable projects but can unlock currently unfundable ones. We are already talking to developers and two projects are currently at the due diligence stage but we want to talk to a lot more.

Greater Manchester is in a unique position, this money is at our disposal and we will invest it wisely to help speed up the delivery of much needed new housing of all types right across the region.”

The current strong economic and employment growth being enjoyed by Greater Manchester is not being matched by housing supply across the region, with a growing population needing to be accommodated. It is estimated that more than 10,000 new housing need to be built, year on year, to keep up with demand.

Local authorities have identified over 30 sites that have yet to see work commence on them but do have existing planning permission in place. Deborah McLaughlin, Chief Executive of Manchester Place, which is Manchester City Council’s housing delivery initiative said: “We cannot afford to sit back when there is a desperate need for new housing.

‘We’re open for business so my message is to come and talk to us as soon as possible. We want to hear from developers. We are looking for viable schemes.

“Some schemes might tick all the boxes but just require some finance to get some started. We have to repay this money back to government so we want schemes that are good to go.”

The loan funding is fully recoverable and it is thought that the funding could be used 2.5 times over the fund’s life, providing a total residential development value of £1.5Bn.

It is expected that the first schemes to benefit from the scheme are to be announced in the coming weeks.

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