FOUR YEARS AND 4000 HOMES ON
News Section: Longhurst Group RSS Feed
Publish Date: 28 June 2010
Author: R Green
Despite public funding cuts and working
against a difficult climate, Blue Skies Consortium has produced
some amazing results with a building programme that doubled its
original financial targets. The Consortium has already helped
to meet a landmark of 4,000 affordable homes across central England
and in the last year started work on 1,074 homes against a start of
year figure of just 413 - almost trebling its original targets.
Blue Skies is a consortium of 16 housing
associations and companies working together with a strong
partnership culture, led by Longhurst Group and Nottingham
Community Housing Association. Blue Skies works from
Birmingham to Norfolk and Humberside to Bedfordshire.
Alan Whyte, Partnerships Director at Longhurst
Group and Chair of Blue Skies said “This has been a great result
for the Consortium and demonstrates our ability to deliver in
challenging market conditions. We will continue to be at the
forefront of this development programme, and are forecasting even
more homes will start on site this year, with just over 1,200 in
the pipeline. We are more than ever aware of the pressing need for
high quality homes at affordable rents and prices.”
“This can be seen clearly with one of our
consortium members, Friendship Care and Housing, who are about to
complete a scheme on Ashborne Road in Derby. This scheme of
31 homes for rent, 4 rent to homebuy and 4 shared ownership, have
been built to a very high standard and there has been a significant
amount of interest locally in the scheme.”
Alan continues “We are also developing a
regeneration scheme in Loughborough for another of our consortium
members, Nottingham Community Housing Association. This
development will provide 91 affordable homes, Homebuy and rented,
as part of a major redevelopment of the area, which includes the
creation of a new link road to improve access to the train station
and remove traffic from nearby narrow residential streets.