The plan will include working with rural communities to deliver on their housing and regeneration priorities.
Homes England works in partnership with the whole market to drive delivery of the government's housing and regeneration priorities. Which involves working with affordable housing providers, combined and local authorities, infrastructure providers, institutional investors and lenders, master developers, private landowners and all types of housebuilders, including SMEs.
The non-departmental body has asked its providers to:
• be creative and ambitious in identifying opportunities for housing and regeneration that meet the needs of local communities with whom they work, and to be assertive in championing these opportunities.
• support and accelerate the delivery of housing-led, mixed-use regeneration projects with a brownfield first approach, focused on areas of greatest need.
• support our efforts to attract more investment into the sector from a wider group of investors and to support new entrants to grow.
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• collaborate, share good practice and identify opportunities for partnership.
• set high aspirations for beauty, quality and sustainability, exceeding existing standards and regulations where possible.
• engage proactively with local communities from the outset of any housing development or regeneration project, offering meaningful opportunities for a range of stakeholders to contribute to the design and planning process.
In order to tackle delivery challenges in rural areas, Homes England works closely with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which is responsible for addressing many wider areas affecting rural communities, including overall housing policy, local growth, local government and devolution, planning policy and reform of the planning system.
Through the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) the public body has the ability to provide higher grant rates in light of higher costs associated with rural housing delivery, where the need can be evidenced. When allocating funding, Homes England will consider how schemes align with its strategic objectives.
Innovative housebuilders and SMEs can be supported through the Levelling Up Home Building Fund. As well as this, the recently launched Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land fund works across the country in urban and rural areas to support economic growth and housing supply.
Homes England has also committed to support DEFRA to deploy the £2.5 million of funding for RHEs announced in Unleashing Rural Opportunity.
The public body has said that it will continue to "support rural communities to build new homes for local people where they are needed, alongside the government’s wider work on levelling up, planning policy, housing delivery, homelessness and second homes. We are committed to working in partnership with DLUHC, DEFRA and other government bodies to support the delivery of government’s emerging and future policy priorities for rural housing".
