Following a first mention in Sajid Javid's speech to the
Conservative Party Conference in October 2016, the Autumn Statement
confirmed the allocation of £1.7 billion over the next four years
to fund an Accelerated Construction Programme to "speed up
housebuilding on public sector land through partnerships with
private developers".
The government will use the £1.7billion funding to see the
building of up to 15,000 homes started within this Parliament on
surplus public sector land identified within the Public Land for Housing Programme.
The intention is to test and develop different models of
construction such as offsite manufacturing which can be scaled up
and rolled out more widely and to diversify involvement in
housebuilding beyond the volume housebuilders and incentivise
faster build-out rates. The programme is so far confined to
government-owned land, but ARCH understands DCLG officials are
likely to write to local authorities early in the new year to
encourage them to adopt a similar approach to the development of
local authority land and that a package of help and support may be
available.
We will keep our members informed of any developments.