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Bid for £50m to kickstart building
A bid for £50m in Government money has been made to kickstart the housing market in Corby.
The cash is being applied for from a 1bn scheme to help building start at mothballed development sites across the north of the county.
North Northants Development Company has applied for 53.1m from a Government pot of 400m that was made available in the April budget to help get the country's housing market moving again.
The first sites to benefit from the Kickstart Housing Delivery Programme will be in Corby at Priors Hall, Oakley Vale and the Kingswood estate.
The cash, which would be used with a further 124m from private housing firm Places for People, would help provide 750 homes at Priors Hall, 250 at Oakley Vale and 146 at Kingswood estate. It is hoped the regeneration of these areas would help create up to 2,000 jobs
Once built, if the houses cannot be sold on the open market, they would be bought by Corby Council at 70 per cent of their value and rented out until they can be sold. The council could borrow up to 10m to fund the scheme.
A wide range of ownership options will be made available to meet individual circumstances and to try to address the lack of mortgage finance available during the recession.
A decision on the funding will be made by September, and, if the bid is successful, building would start right away.
Chief executive of North Northants Development Company Simon Evans said: "We put together the Partnership Villages initiative when we started to respond to the downturn in the housing market.
"We wanted to do something on a large scale to maintain the momentum.
"The sites we have chosen for the first phase are those where work can begin immediately. They are all in Corby because that's where so much regeneration and growth activity has been. We have bid for 53.1m from a pot of 400m which is available for the whole country so it's a fairly ambitious move but we believe we meet the criteria."
When more funds are available, NNDC and its partner councils, developer BeLa Partnerships and Places for People, will look at sites at Stanton Cross in Wellingborough East, Higham Ferrers, Raunds and Kettering town centre.
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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