Homes England announces exciting opportunity for Land and Development

Last week, Homes England announced allocations of £8.6 billion from the Affordable Homes Funding Programme 21/26 to build circa 120,000 new homes with Strategic Partners across England. As the dust settles on this fantastic news, many development teams will be looking at their proposed future programmes and pipelines to ensure development delivery.

At Drees & Sommer UK, our Land and Development Team has helped to support existing and prospective Strategic Partner Registered Providers with land and build package deals as part of their SP bids to Homes England, including securing a land bank of circa 1000 units across six sites for one RP. This enabled our partners to provide assurance to Homes England of secured and early delivery of their proposed programme for assessment and we are pleased to say they have been successful.

We are also currently supporting a number of other RPs across the country with funding bids for the 21/26 allocation of monies via the CME route for delivery of a variety of mixed tenure schemes as part of their development programme.

We at Drees & Sommer UK support RPs by introducing, sourcing, bidding, and securing land along with leading on assembling land and build packages for sales and affordable home ownership products across England and Wales through our specialist Land and Development Team offer:

• Sourcing land banking opportunities in strategic areas of priority
• Introducing and assembling land and build packages with reputable contractors
• Supporting RPs to competitively bid for land both on and off market
• Supporting RPs to strategically bid and negotiate Section 106 units with developers

Our L&D team work very closely with RP’s senior development and sales teams to actively secure the acquisition of sites, providing the following services to support on sales, shared ownership, and mixed tenure sites:

• Identifying opportunities through our extensive network of land agents, owners, promoters, developers, and contacts
• Undertaking a rigorous assessment of the new site opportunity to identify any implications including around its boundaries, identifying any challenges, abnormals, existing services etc.
• Providing expert support to understand and develop a strong brief for the project team, to enable understanding of key priorities and objectives
• Engaging with partners to procure any further surveys, outstanding information and production of outline scheme designs in line with client brief
• Undertaking due diligence of reports and documentation
• Procuring and assessing market values/reports for sales
• Production and review of demographic studies and understanding local housing needs
• Undertaking a number of option appraisals to inform viability of the site
• Assessing whole life costs for schemes
• Production of scheme GDV’s
• Negotiation of costs, programme, and specification with potential package contractors
• Procuring, managing, and leading design teams through the early development stages, engaging with all stakeholders to successfully achieve policy compliance and secure planning status for schemes
• Negotiation and acquisition of sites with vendors/site owners
• Liaising with legal teams on Heads of Terms, T&Cs, and DAs
• Supporting the creation of Joint Ventures with Developers, helping RPs with negotiation of T&Cs

Drees & Sommer UK have significant experience in developing larger complex sites for mixed tenure schemes, often involving multiple stakeholders and clients. We’re currently working for Onward Homes to finalise the land banking of sites with planning for circa 1,000 units. We’re also securing key sites for a partnership between a number of Housing Associations in North Wales, and are working on the remediation of a strategic North West sales site, in partnership with Homes England and Torus, following our successful bid on the site for the housing provider.

Our L&D Team would be delighted to assist RPs to successfully deliver on their development programmes, creating much needed homes across England and Wales.

For more information please contact us - info.uk@dreso.com