Pioneering Partnerships

Our Homes England Strategic Partnership was extended in 2019 and we are on target to deliver 1,858 new homes as part of this exciting initiative.

During the year, we successfully delivered a range of projects and ended March 2020 with 698 affordable homes on site.

Great Places continues to be an active member of the Greater Manchester Housing Providers (GMHP). Alongside other GMHP members, we are substantial investors in our communities and, over recent years, we have collectively delivered around 40% of new homes across Greater Manchester.

Working across all 10 Greater Manchester districts, our commitment to the GMHP agenda is pivotal to our work. We help to shape the strategies and interventions on a wide range of issues such as health and social care, employment and skills, fuel poverty and the ageing population. We also lead on the growth workstream and are actively involved in others including homelessness, social value and employment and skills.

GM Housing Providers’ social value work in particular has attracted significant attention with the partnership receiving the Award for “Collaboration between organisations to enhance social value of a place” at the National Social Value Conference in January 2020

It’s been an exciting inaugural year for Hive Homes, our unique joint venture with 9 other housing associations and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA). We have now moved from a conceptual position into the delivery stage of the business and are committed to making a positive impact across the Greater Manchester housing market.

We have exchanged contracts and will be imminently on site at our first development of 48 homes in Middleton. In addition, we have had offers accepted on two sites in Bolton providing 90 homes and are near to exchange of contracts on our second site of 102 homes in Castleton with Homes England. With these projects and others in the pipeline, we have made a significant step towards delivering the 700 homes set out in Hive Homes’s Business Plan.

In September 2019, we joined four other housing providers in the Sheffield City region to create Forge New Homes. This new and innovative joint venture works collaboratively with the Sheffield City region Combined Authority and nine other local authorities to deliver homes across all nine districts to meet the needs of the local communities.

Forge New Homes aims to grow its pipeline to develop at least 300 new homes each year and has already exchanged contracts on its first site.

Innovation Chain North (ICN) is a framework for construction and associated professional services procured under the Public Contracts Regulations 2015. Led by Great Places, the framework supports contractors looking to deliver mixed-use housing and associated social infrastructure across the North-West and Yorkshire.

ICN’s continued success through 2019/2020 includes:

• Re-procurement of the new framework and rebrand to Innovation Chain North (ICN), enabling clients and suppliers from across the North of England to join.
• The framework was released in November 2019, resulting in a 56% uplift in bidders (compared to 2016) when the tenders were returned in January 2020.
• Along with other members of the framework, we evaluated 726 quality bids, which included strong social value proposals and competitive pricing.
• The framework now includes 30 contractors and 83 consultants covering a wide range of disciplines to enable us to deliver against our ambitious development programme and tackle the housing crisis.
• The new ICN framework launched in July 2020 and will run for a period of four years. Other housing association clients are signing up for its use.
• After a four-year period, the Innovation Chain North framework drew close to delivering approximately 2,500 homes built by contractors, with more than 450 successful call-offs made to consultants on an even wider range of homes.

We continue to be an active member of Homes for the North (H4N), an alliance of the largest 17 developing housing associations in the North. The ethos of Homes for the North is to improve the supply and quality of new homes in the North, creating economic growth, higher living standards and stronger communities where people can achieve their aspirations.

We are also leading on a series of projects to open doors for a “˜pan-Northern’ Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) solution to assist in the acceleration of new home delivery, which has led to Great Places’ first fully modular scheme at Shorrock Lane, Blackburn which started on site in March 2020.

Our innovative new partnership with Legal & General Affordable Homes will see us supporting them to deliver 3,500 new homes across 27 areas.

The quality new homes will be for affordable rent and shared ownership, helping to create thriving communities where people are proud to live.