Homes England buys sites for 7,400 homes

Housing quango Homes England spent £175m buying sites for more than 7,400 homes in the last financial year, according to the agency’s new chair, Peter Freeman.

The agency has taken on more than 400 hectares of land on 17 separate sites, including major developments such as a 2,160-home sustainable urban extension outside Sutton Coldfield and the 1,200-home Attleborough scheme in Norfolk.

The spending, in the year to the end of March, came despite a hiatus in the land market in the immediate wake of the coronavirus lockdown last spring. The figure of £175m is less than the £180m spent in the previous year, but will produce more homes, according to the agency.

It said the 17 sites bought this most recent year will produce 7,400 homes, compared with just 5,000 built in the year before.

Peter Freeman (pictured) said: “By bringing these sites into our ownership we will use our resources to unblock them, get them shovel-ready and back on the market so that housebuilders and housing associations can build them out to the design quality standards we set.

”Providing this steady pipeline of sites is one of many ways in which we are providing certainty to the industry, particularly the smaller end of the sector.”

Homes England is tasked with buying up sites where the market would otherwise struggle to build them out, often providing infrastructure which makes them viable for development. Sites are then sold on to private sector developers to build them out.

The announcement comes after Homes England pushed forward with a major revamp of its procurement system in the last month. Thisa is designed to ensure that new entrants to the market are not blocked from taking on schemes on its land.

The agency also announced yesterday that it was working with the Building Research Establishment and the Design Council to draw up a new set of development standards.

See the table below for the full list of sites acquired by Homes England: