Housing association Midland Heart has restarted its work to deliver much-needed new affordable homes following the relaxation of lockdown restrictions.
The 33,000-home landlord has worked with developers across the region to reopen 23 of its 28 active sites so far, which together will provide more than 1,000 new homes.
The projects that were paused during the COVID-19 restrictions range from an almost-complete development of 52 homes in Bushby, Leicestershire, to a recently-started new retirement scheme in Lichfield.
All sites that are back at work have put in place extra safety measures including strict social distancing, to keep workers safe.
Chris Miller, Director of Development for Midland Heart, said: “While the pandemic has rightly been at the forefront of everyone’s minds in recent months, the national housing shortage hasn’t gone away.
“Safety on site is our top priority, so from the early days of lockdown we’ve been working with our development partners on plans to safely reopen sites as soon as housebuilding was allowed to resume.
“Some of these properties are just weeks away from being handed over to their new occupants, so we’re really pleased that we’ve been able to get back to the business of delivering good quality affordable homes to people who need them.”
Midland Heart has a published target of 3,000 new homes to be built across the region by 2024. The housing association is working with a number of quality housebuilders to achieve this, including formal partnership arrangements with high profile developers Countryside and Partner.
Last year, Midland Heart completed and handed over more than 550 new properties to customers, including a £58million trio of developments on brownfield sites in Leicester that delivered almost 400 homes.
