West of England housing association Curo and Essex-based Swan have secured a new strategic partnership with Homes England to build more affordable homes.

Curo and Swan will receive £160.4 million funding from the new Affordable Homes Programme to deliver 2,425 homes over the next five years, in addition to their existing development pipelines.

The homes will be a mix of social/affordable rent and low-cost hownership tenures and will be delivered across the housing associations' respective operating areas in South West and South East England.

This is the second time Curo and Swan have secured strategic partnership funding, after being granted £51.1 million in 2019 to build 1,067 new affordable homes by March 2024.

Aside from making possible much-needed new affordable homes, the government funding will also help drive investment in local economies and create jobs and skills.

In South West England, Curo works in partnership with housing associations Alliance Homes and Magna Housing to accelerate delivery of new affordable housing through their strategic partnership with Homes England.

Curo Chief Executive, Victor da Cunha, says: "I'm delighted that Curo and Swan have again been chosen as strategic partners of the government's housing agency. Working with Swan as our joint Homes England strategic partner and our delivery partners in South West England, Alliance and Magna, has been very successful over the past few years and I'm sure it will continue to be a productive partnership in the future.

"Delivering another c. 2,500 homes with Homes England is an exciting prospect. The South West is in desperate need of additional social rent and low-cost homeownership housing at prices local people can genuinely afford. With this additional £160m investment, we will be able to boost output and further address the regional housing crisis."

Swan Housing Association is one of the leading regenerating social landlords across Essex and East London. They recently acquired a second modular housing factory in Basildon, where they will precision engineer steel framed volumetric homes as part of their strategic partnership delivery.

John Synnuck, Swan CEO, says: "We are delighted that we now have this opportunity to continue to successfully work in partnership with Curo and deliver on Homes England's ambitious affordable housing programme.

"We particularly welcome the focus in the new 5-year programme on the use of Modern Methods of Construction to deliver these much-needed affordable homes and we will use our second modular housing factory to build high quality new homes whilst creating new jobs, retraining staff from other sectors and supporting UK manufacturing to help the UK to build back better."

Social rent homes are usually 50-60% of market prices, while affordable rent sits at about 80% of market rates. Many of the new homes funded by the strategic partnership grant will be available through affordable homeownership schemes, helping more young people and families to get a foot on the housing ladder.Nyk