Housing Growth Partnership to provide additional £300m to SME builders

The fund will support a wider range of housing tenures to meet the UK’s diverse and evolving housing needs.

Housing Growth Partnership to provide additional £300m to SME builders

The Housing Growth Partnership (HGP), funded by Lloyds Banking Group and Homes England, has committed £300m equity funding to small and medium enterprise (SME) and regional housebuilders.

 

The fund will support a wider range of housing tenures to meet the UK’s diverse and evolving housing needs.

The first HGP fund was announced in 2016, and this £300m commitment will help HGP achieve its target of supporting the development of 10,000 new homes by 2025.

The fund will be broader in scope, to enable investment into larger housebuilding projects, with a development value of up to £75m.

It aims to offer support for the delivery of a wider range of housing projects including Build to Rent, regeneration and retirement living.

The partnership will also look to prioritise projects with a greater sustainability focus, as well as those using modern methods of construction (MMC) and other evolutionary construction methods.

Since its launch, the Housing Growth Partnership has invested alongside 46 housebuilders to support the delivery of over 4,568 new homes, with nearly half now completed and sold to families across the UK.

Christopher Pincher, Housing Minister, said: “It is a top priority of this government to increase housing supply so hard-working people can be helped into home ownership.

“A thriving SME sector is crucial to our house building targets and ambitions.

"This significant amount of funding will help smaller and regional housebuilders by providing them with the financial support necessary to deliver much needed new homes.”

Vic Hepburn, chief executive of Housing Growth Partnership, said: “We are pleased to be building on the success of the Housing Growth Partnership by extending the range of support we can provide to the UK housebuilding market.

"This includes our new multi-tenure approach which will provide more flexibility for housebuilders and more choice for homebuyers.

“The introduction of the Regional Growth Initiative will also allow the Housing Growth Partnership to support the most ambitious housebuilders in a more substantial way with additional financial and strategic support.”

Harry Swales, chief investment officer at Homes England, added : “The Housing Growth Partnership has already proved to be a huge public-private sector success and we’re now pleased to expand the fund to offer SMEs further support.

"By injecting this additional investment and harnessing Lloyds Banking Group’s commercial skills we’re able to diversify the market, support increasing numbers of builders and provide the homes the country needs.”