Kickstart round one details confirmed

Published: 2009-11-30 10:13:42

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has finished its assessment of the 270 housing schemes shortlisted for funding under the £400 million Kickstart housing delivery programme announced in the 2009 budget.
 
To see the Kickstart schemes approved by November 26th, by region, click here.

To qualify for Kickstart, projects had to be for high-quality mixed-tenure housing and each site had a range of eligibility criteria including the need for a planning consent. Local authorities are not eligible to apply and neither are ALMOs, for whom the government offers separate funding sources.

All the qualifying schemes had been stalled by the recession and the HCA has now approved 91 of them for funding, plus a further 63 subject to conditions or closer consideration. Taken together, this amounts to £231 million in funding for as many as 11,700 new and affordable homes. Since the original launch of Kickstart, the government has allocated an additional £660 million for the programme as part of its Building Britain's Future package.

The HCA's announcement refers to the first bidding round of Kickstart, which started last May and the plan is for all the qualifying schemes to be "unlocked" by the end of March 2011. There is currently a second round to cover housing schemes completing in 2011/12 and bids had to be with the HCA by mid-October. It is expected that the shortlist and reserve list of qualifying schemes will be announced by early December and final allocations will be made during December and January. This second round would therefore see the qualifying schemes unlocked by Spring 2012.

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