Greater Manchester and the West Midlands are to receive an additional £250 million in funding for social housing following new devolution arrangements for the two city-regions.
Local authorities in Greater Manchester are to receive £150 million (with the remaining £100 million going to councils in the West Midlands Combined Authority area) to support the city-region’s target of building 7,000 new homes in the next three years. Funding will help local authorities identify and remediate brownfield sites for development for social housing.
The devolution deal also gives Greater Manchester additional powers to identify sites for social housing, and will particularly benefit social landlords operating in the city-region, including in Stockport: Stockport Homes Group, Johnnie Johnson Housing and Great Places Housing Group, which recent saw planning approval for 73 apartments off King Street West within the Stockport Mayoral Development Corporation’s Town Centre West regeneration area.
Additional powers for both Greater Manchester and the West Midlands were announced as part of March’s Spring Budget, which saw the two mayoral combined authorities given greater control over budgets and expanded devolved powers as ‘trailblazer’ city-regions.
Greater Manchester previously had addition devolved powers of housing, such as those being implemented by Stockport MDC as part of the borough’s town centre regeneration plans, but under new rules, will no longer be required to defer funding decisions to Whitehall. Instead the city-region will have control over its own budget for areas devolved to the local government.
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