The government’s housing delivery agency helps to build homes across England and encourage innovation, both in the kind of homes that are built and the way they are delivered.

They do this in two ways:

  • by providing development finance to small and medium house builders
  • by providing infrastructure funding to support developers, master developers and landowners

The housing delivery agency will continue to provide investment directly to developers, in the form of loans, and to specialist lenders.

Loans can start from £250,000, with house builders typically borrowing between £2 million and £5 million. Development finance is designed to support small and medium homebuilders that are struggling to access development finance from the private market and to help new entrants into the housing sector, to bolster house building and diversify the market.

If you are a small or medium sized house builder and are interested in applying for a development loan, you will need to have majority control of the site you plan to build on and be planning to build five or more homes.

In addition to providing development loans, Homes England is keen to explore how funding from the Levelling Up Home Building Fund can be used to develop more sophisticated financial arrangements, such as lending alliances with the private sector, increasing the amount of funding we are able to provide to the housebuilding sector.

The fund also has the capacity to form joint ventures, which can support projects to regenerate town centres and revive public places, working with local councils, housing developers and others.

See: Funding support for new residential-led development – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)