Funding approved for new homes on Kirkholt

Kirkholt is set to receive extra housing after it was chosen as one of the priority areas by the Greater Manchester Executive.

The Kirkholt scheme was one of 29 schemes throughout Greater Manchester for which the AGMA Executive approved the allocation of Homes and Communities Agency grant funding last Friday.

In total the 29 schemes will spend over £25 million supporting the funding the construction of 673 homes, 24 schemes under the National Affordable Homes Programme (NAHP), 3 under the Kickstart programme and 2 Local Authority New Build Schemes.

Kirkholt scheme will build 31 homes for rent + 3 under "Homebuy" on various sites in partnership with Brighter Horizons. The grant for that scheme is £2,320,000. The other Rochdale scheme approved was the Hill Street , involving 5 homes for rent in partnership with Great Northern Counties, supported with a grant of £310,000.

For every one of the 24 NAHP schemes, in every one of the ten AGMA Boroughs, where the sites are Council owned the site will be sold to the developer for a nominal £1. This is normal practice for affordable housing schemes as it provides a Council subsidy to help the schemes take place. If this were not done the HCA funding would enable far fewer homes to be provided.

Balderstone and Kirkholt Councillor Liz Thirk said: "This is fantastic news for Kirkholt. Rochdale needs more affordable housing and this is another step towards our target of providing an extra 150 homes for rent by 2011. I look forward to the project commencing later this year."

Ward colleague Councillor Dale Mulgrew said: "I'm delighted that the council has done a great job in managing to secure this funding for Kirkholt. The previous announcement that this scheme would be reviewed caused a wave of disappointment around the estate, as residents thought that once more plans to change Kirkholt were to be dashed.

This is because this housing scheme is part of the wider regeneration project for the estate, and residents around Kirkholt are getting impatient on the delivery of the overall vision.

But this great news now means that progress can continue on the plans for the estate, and with new housing also planned to be started soon on the site of the former Queensway primary School, the regeneration project can now start to shift its focus towards what the future of the Strand shopping precint should look like.