Hull Council to use £17m to build 850 homes after 20-year wait
Hull Council is set to use £17m to kickstart delivery of large-scale residential development on the East Bank of the River Hull – a project 20 years in the making which has already swallowed up millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.
The council signed a 15-year development agreement with English Cities Fund, a joint venture between the government’s Homes England agency and private firms Muse and Legal & General earlier this year.
A statement said that the capital funding would "help to unlock around £125m of external funding for the project.”
Funding will be needed from other external funders to cover the “viability gap” with discussions ongoing with Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority and Homes England.
A report to the council’s Cabinet reveals that most of the £9.85m announced by then Secretary of State Michael Gove as part of “Levelling Up” funding in 2023 has already been spent.
It says: “This funding has been largely utilised to deliver early works for the project including land and property acquisitions, investigation and remediation planning of site abnormals and design fees, with outstanding sums committed to ongoing workstreams.”
The project started life as the £100m Boom development, featuring nine apartment blocks along the river, but this fell through after the 2007 to 2008 global financial crash.
Only the Premier Inn hotel was built along with the Scale Lane swing bridge.
ECF will handle master planning, development, and construction of up to 850 new homes, commercial spaces, public plazas, and green areas on the strip of land opposite the city’s Old Town.
The council says the 115 homes in the first phase will be “affordable”.
The report says the money will be handed over as phases of the project develops until its expected completion in 2038.
It stresses the difficulty of regeneration in a city where average property prices are among the lowest in England, but build costs are high, due to difficult ground conditions.
It said: “Proposals for East Bank deliver a high-quality, high-density scheme that would deliver a scale of regeneration not suitable across other development sites in the city centre.
"This includes outline proposals for high rise building that enable extensive open and green space between, instead of a low density but tight grain scheme of low-rise houses across the plot.”
In a statement Councillor Paul Drake-Davis, a member of the Lib Dem ruling Cabinet, said the scheme would “transform the city centre and act as a catalyst for further investment and development” as well as providing affordable homes.