Broadland Housing Association

Homes, community & support since 1963

    • affordable

    New affordable homes at Castle Acre, Norfolk

    New affordable homes at Castle Acre Norfolk

    New affordable homes at Castle Acre, Norfolk

    From l to r: Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director; Rik Potter, Project Manager, Holkham Estate Company Ltd; The Earl of Leicester (Chairman, Holkham Estate Company Ltd); Michael Newey, Chief Executive Officer, in front of the new social rent properties at Bricknel Close

    Broadland is delighted to have acquired 3 beautiful new affordable homes at Bricknel Close, Castle Acre, from the Holkham Estate.

    Two of the 2-bedroom properties are for social rent and another 2-bedroom house will be available for shared ownership.

    Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director, said:

    We’ve been working closely with the Holkham Estate on this project and it is great to see these high-quality homes come to fruition. There is a chronic shortage of affordable rural housing, so this is a timely development.

    The new development is called Bricknel Close, after the original name of the field where the houses are built. In old English, ‘brik’ means bright and ‘halh’ means place – suggesting a bright place open to the skies, rather than in woodland.

    Work begins on new council flats in Great Yarmouth

    Work begins on new council flats in Great Yarmouth

    A ground breaking ceremony marked the start of work on 18 new council flats in Great Yarmouth. Broadland is working in partnership with Great Yarmouth Borough Council on the £3 million development.

    Architect drawing, Jubilee Court, Great Yarmouth (picture courtesy of GYBC)

    Jubilee Court is named in honour of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. It will comprise 3 blocks of 3-storey buildings containing one-bedroom flats for council tenants.

    Each 50sqm flat is designed to be suitable for two people and will be built to high energy-efficiency standards. There will be a communal garden and parking area.

    Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director, joined members of Great Yarmouth Borough Council, One Public Estate and H. Smith and Sons the ceremony by the Beach Coach Station in May.

    The need is outstripping supply. It’s the first time in a long time social and affordable housing has been developed here by the council. It’s good to be able to help the council piece this together. The council are really trying to meet that demand and I think this is fantastic for Great Yarmouth.

    Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director

    At the event, Great Yarmouth Borough Council Leader Carl Smith said the new development was the “biggest expansion” of the council’s housing stock in almost 20 years. Speaking to the Great Yarmouth Mercury, he said:

    The 18 new flats will offer valuable new housing, particularly for single people and young families.

    Carl Smith, Leader, Great Yarmouth Borough Council

    The homes are due to be completed in around 12 months.

    Main picture credit: James Weeds

    Sleepout volunteers raise £2,616 for innovative homelessness project

    Michael Newey, CEO of Broadland Housing Association, with John Lee of Norfolk YMCA

    Sleepout volunteers raise £2,616 for innovative homelessness project

    Volunteers from Broadland Housing and YMCA Norfolk have raised £2,616 for an innovative project that will help set up young vulnerable homeless people in their first homes.

    Around 30 volunteers, including Broadland Housing Chief Executive Michael Newey and 9 other Broadland staff, slept out on a wet and cold night in March in the car park of the YMCA Community Hub in Norwich. They bedded down in cardboard boxes to raise money for the Housing First project.  The cash will be used to buy furniture for young people setting up in their own home.

    Michael Newey and John Lee
    Michael Newey (left) and John Lee (right)

    Michael Newey returned to the Community Hub to present the money to YMCA Chief Executive John Lee – who was also among the volunteers sleeping out for the night.

    Spending one night in the cold and wet was an eye-opener for those taking part, who will fortunately never know what it is like to be sleeping rough on the streets.  For us it was just one night. For people who are homeless, they face the cold, the wet and the dangers of being on the streets night after night.

    Broadland Housing is absolutely committed to tackling the problem of homelessness, and we are delighted to be working with the YMCA to be delivering the Housing First project with them, the first of its kind in East Anglia.

    Michael Newey, CEO, Broadland Housing Association

    We are delighted at the amount raised from the sleepout, which is part of the partnership between the YMCA and Broadland Housing, which is helping to deliver a really worthwhile project aimed at homeless young people who have difficult or chaotic backgrounds.

    For a number of reasons, these young people find hostel accommodation difficult, so the aim of Housing First is to skip that step and get them established in their own homes, with a support package to help them succeed in their tenancies and get their lives back on track.

    John Lee, Chief Executive, YMCA

    Housing First is an approach which aims to tackle homelessness among people with particularly complex needs by aiming to get individuals into their own home as quickly as possible and providing them with the support they need to make it work.  It involves minimising the amount of time spent in temporary accommodation and seeks to minimise the number of moves someone has to make before they move into a permanent home.

    World-leading construction industry body visits Canary Quay, Norwich

    CIOB visit to Canary Quay, Norwich, 17 March 2022

    World-leading construction industry body visits Canary Quay

    Caroline Gumble with Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director, and James Carter of RG Carter

    We recently welcomed Caroline Gumble, Chief Executive Officer at the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), to Canary Quay. The CIOB is the world’s largest and most influential professional body for construction management and leadership.

    Now in its final phase, Canary Quay will provide 323 mixed tenure apartments when complete.

    Caroline noted the close working and collaborative approach between Broadland Housing Association, Broadland St Benedicts and our construction partners RG Carter. The Canary Quay project has turned an industrial warehouse and car park into a new residential area in the heart of the city.

    Caroline was in Norwich promoting the launch of the new CIOB equality, diversity and inclusion charter for the construction industry.

    Broadland secures £15 million for new affordable homes through sustainable bonds

    Working with MORhomes, Broadland has raised funding for new development through the issuance of £15 million of sustainable bonds.

    A sustainable business

    To be eligible for this funding, we had to demonstrate that we are a sustainable business and fulfil certain environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria.

    We will use the proceeds generated from the bond issuance to fund new affordable homes.

    Competitively priced, long-term funding

    MORhomes is 100% owned and controlled by housing associations. It is constituted as a PLC and applies the highest standards of corporate governance. MORhomes is a unique and innovative borrowing vehicle for the UK social housing sector, raising finance on the bond markets and lending it on to housing associations, who must be shareholders.

    At Broadland we are focused on sustainability across all parts of our organisation. Our involvement with MORhomes and their Sustainability Bond has provided us with an opportunity to demonstrate our ESG credentials and obtain competitively priced, long-term funding that will allow us to develop new affordable homes.

    Iain Grieve, Executive Finance Director, Broadland Housing

    We are proud to have developed a genuinely unique approach to assessing the sustainability impact of our housing association borrowers. Borrowers like Broadland Housing who meet our standards are going above and beyond current requirements and helping meet the Government’s zero carbon target and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. We are pleased to be able to demonstrate to investors the excellent sustainability work which they are doing.

    Patrick Symington, Chief Executive, MORhomes

    It was a pleasure to work with Broadland and MORhomes to deliver this successful and competitively priced long-term funding. This financing will enable Broadland to continue to deliver its development programme and meet the needs of its customers.

    Lawrence Gill, Director Corporate Finance, Centrus – advisors to Broadland

    For more details about the sustainable bonds issuance, please see the MORhomes’ announcement.

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