Weeks after completing a merger with Liverpool Mutual Homes, Torus has announced it has secured £66m from Government agency Homes England. Tony McDonough reports
Affordable homes provider Torus is to build more almost 7,000 affordable homes in Liverpool, St Helens and Warrington over the next five years in a £750m investment.
Weeks after completing a merger with Liverpool Mutual Homes (LMH), Torus has announced it has secured £66m from Government agency Homes England as part if a drive to ramp up the delivery of new homes across the UK.
Torus had already committed to building 5,300 new homes over the next five years and the new funding means it will be able to increase that figure by 29%.
The award is designed to give housing associations an opportunity to expand and accelerate their development plans, particularly where there’s a focus on land led developments, place-making and regeneration.
Managing director of development at Torus, Chris Bowen, said: “When we amalgamated as a group we set out some very firm objectives, one of which was to make the supply of affordable homes in the North West an absolute priority.
“We have a real commitment to investing in the communities we serve so the main focus of our development programme will be on land led developments, place making and regeneration in our key heartland areas of Liverpool, Warrington and St Helens.
“This extra funding means that we can invest in our heartlands with real certainty and our original ambition to build 5,300 homes is now an absolute minimum, in fact we expect to significantly exceed this figure.”
The group has already delivered nearly 800 affordable new homes across the Liverpool city region, including developments in Everton, Heswall, Belle Vale, Walton and Fazakerley.
New developments in Bromborough, Edge Lane, Kirkby, Kirkdale and Rock Ferry are amongst 600 more underway and plans for a further 900-plus homes across the region in the pipeline.
The merger between Torus and LMH creates one of the North West’s largest housing groups, with around 40,000 homes, 1,500 staff and an annual turnover of more than £180m. Torus itself is a group partnership between Helena Partnerships and Cheshire’s Golden Gates Housing Trust.