Blue Skies receives 10th highest NAHP funding allocation for

08/11

The Blue Skies Consortium, headed up by Longhurst Group and Nottingham Community HA, have been allocated over £40 million of grant to create in excess of 1,000 new affordable homes in ‘08/11.

This is the 10th largest national award out of a total of 105 bids submitted to the Housing Corporation.

The award will provide part of the funding required for 1080 quality new homes to be built over the next 3 years for people in need of affordable housing. Private finance will provide another £80m producing a total investment of over £120million.

Bob Walder, Chief Executive at Longhurst Group commented, ‘It is a fact that there is a chronic shortage of affordable housing in our region. The size of this award will go some way to help reduce this shortage.

This is a superb result and testimony to the hard work put in by our development team and consortium partners’. Walder added.

The funding application successfully met the Housing Corporation's new standards for value and quality. It outlined the need for housing to be delivered to a high design standard with a reduction in carbon footprint, contributing to a saving of more than 90,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. The application outlined aims to deliver a larger number of rural family homes, as well as focusing on specialist housing for older and vulnerable people.

The Housing Corporation have £8.4billion available for the 08/11 period. The total funding will provide at least 155,000 new affordable homes in the next three years, almost double the number of affordable homes compared to 2006-08. More than 100,000 of these will be for affordable rent, and more than 50,000 for affordable sale through various Government HomeBuy initiatives.