The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) plans to start selling off its land in packages to secure developers for difficult sites. The agency will use its Accelerated Construction programme to procure a single developer across several sites at once.
The approach would allow the HCA to place several “fragmented” sites into a larger development vehicle, in an attempt to speed up the pace of delivery. It intends to focus the disposals on developers able to use modern offsite and factory building methods.
The HCA’s £1.7bn Accelerated Construction programme was set up in October to underwrite development risks using government funds and has appointed Barratt’s growth and partnerships director, Stephen Kinsella, as the programme director.
Its approach involves pledging to buy back units from developers if they won’t sell on central government land currently controlled by the HCA, as well as paying for enabling infrastructure.