Barclays and Homes England launches £1bn fund

Barclays has joined forces with the Government agency Homes England to launch a £1bn housing development fund.

The fund will offer loans ranging from £5m to £100m to developers and house builders who are able to demonstrate the necessary experience and track record to undertake and complete their proposed project.

Funding is open to new clients as well as existing Barclays clients, and will put greater emphasis on diversifying the housing market, as at present, almost two-thirds of homes are built by just 10 companies.

Barclays is providing £875m of the £1bn total and Homes England, the Government’s national housing agency, will contribute £125m to the fund.

The housing secretary James Brokenshire said the fund is a ‘fantastic opportunity to not only get more homes built but also promote new and innovative approaches to construction and design that exist across the housing market’.

The chairman of Homes England, Sir Ed Lister, said: ‘Homes England has been established to play a more active role in the housing market and do things differently to increase the pace, scale and quality of delivering new homes.

‘The Housing Delivery Fund demonstrates Barclays’ commitment to the residential sector and will provide a new funding stream for SME developers to help progress sites and deliver more affordable homes across England.’

While Barclays’ chairman, John McFarlane, added: ‘There is a vital need to build more good quality homes across the country. This £1bn fund is about helping to do exactly that by showing firms in the business of house building that the right finance is available for projects that help meet this urgent need.

‘We are very pleased to be working with government to get the country building more homes, more quickly.’

In July, Homes England announced partnerships with eight housing associations to help deliver more affordable homes across the country.

The first wave of this new partnership approach is expected to support the building of 14,280 additional affordable homes by March 2022.