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City given council homes pledge
MORE than 100 new council houses are to be built in the Bradford area and another 1,000 will be modernised, it was announced yesterday.
The area's biggest social housing landlord – Incommunities, which administers council housing – said it planned to spend nearly 49m building 144 new homes and renovating many more.
Under an agreement with Barclays Bank, 10m is set to go into supporting the construction of the new homes across the area over the next two years.
Funding approval totalling 8.9m has also been agreed by the national housing and regeneration agency, the Homes and Communities Agency and the Tenant Services Authority, which will kickstart building work on eight new sites over the next few weeks.
These cover Ravenscliffe (45 homes) Bridgegate Way in Idle (6 homes); Burnham Avenue, Bierley (9 homes); Crawford Avenue, Odsal (10 homes); Otley Road, Barkerend (19 homes); Scholemoor (21 homes), Springwood Gardens, Parkside (15 homes) and Woodhouse in Keighley (19 homes). These homes will be available for rent.
Incommunities has already built 115 homes for rent and for sale through shared ownership in the area and more than 120 are currently under way.
Recent spending has so far seen over 14,000 local homes successfully improved to the Bradford Standard, a level in excess of the Government's Decent Homes Standard.
New investment will include fitting new kitchens and bathrooms and rewiring work to more than 1,000 homes.
These include further phased improvements to homes at Baildon, Ravenscliffe, Thorpe Edge, Swain House, Woodhouse and Guardhouse in Keighley and brand new refurbishment schemes at Bracken Bank in Keighley and Addingham.
Incommunities estimates the new investment will safeguard or create more than 600 local construction jobs over the next two years.
Group chief executive Geraldine Howley said: "We are delighted to have agreed this major investment working in partnership with Barclays Bank and secured funding approval from the Homes and Communities Agency and Tenant Services Authority. It will enable us to deliver more new affordable homes for local families.
"As the area's biggest social landlord we are committed to helping to meet the growing demand for high quality social housing and provide homes of first choice.
"We are also fulfilling the promise we made at Stock Transfer in 2003 to modernise our existing stock for the benefit of our customers and a large part of this new investment will go towards continuing to make improvements to peoples homes and their quality of life."
Bradford Council's executive member for regeneration and economy, Adrian Naylor, said: "This is fantastic for residents across the district who will see further improvements to their homes.
"Creating as many as 600 local jobs would always be welcomed but in the current economic climate it is even better news and will give the Bradford economy a big boost."
Incommunities owns and manages over 22,000 homes across the Bradford area.
It was formerly known as Bradford Community Housing Trust until its change of name in June last year.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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