Another 789 homes coming to East Midlands as Mayor secures extra £19.7m
Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire will get 789 more homes as part of a scheme to regenerate abandoned land.
It comes after central government afforded a further £19.7m to the East Midlands Combined County Authority (EMCCA).
The houses, on which work has to begin by 2029, will be in addition to the near 1,400 already planned courtesy of EMCCA’s Brownfield Housing Fund (BHF).
EMCCA secured an initial £16.8m for the BHF in 2024, not long after the authority had been set up, to split between a number of developers with plans for housing schemes all over the region.
For schemes funded by that pot, contracts must be in place by March 2026, with a view to building work beginning in March 2027.
EMCCA interim programme and housing lead Barry Cummins said that plans are “on track”.
“We’re broadly in a strong position,” he said. “We have a great deal of work to do to get the schemes into contract by March. But all of the candidates are working at pace and with huge enthusiasm to meet that timetabling to deliver the homes that are needed for this reason.”
The news of the new funding boost was revealed at the first formal meeting of EMCCA’s Housing & Land committee, at Derby Council House on Wednesday, September 17.
Chair Tricia Gilby praised the work of the Committee, saying: “Absolutely excellent work being done. This is a five-page document, but there’s been five mountains worth of work that has been done since this fund has been announced.”
The extra homes will receive more money per unit from EMCCA – at around £25,000 – than those receiving funding through the initial pot, at around £15,000. This explains the reason why despite the overall new allocation being a higher sum of money, fewer homes will be built with it.
The authority will now prepare to receive submissions from housing schemes that could be eligible for the extra funding.
The money EMCCA received – and will receive, totalling now £36.5m, is hoped to be the key to “unlock” a number of stalled developments, which had fallen through due to a lack of funding or other reasons.
Schemes are only eligible for the funding if they are being built on brownfield land, which refers to land that has been developed on before, as opposed to “greenfield” land, which has never been built on.
The details of many planning applications can be found in public notices advertised by local and regional newspapers. To catch up on all the latest public notices, go to https://publicnoticeportal.uk/