Ambitious Development Plans

We have appointed two new land and planning directors to help us achieve our new, ambitious development programme.

Our corporate strategy promises to deliver 2,500 new homes by 2023/24 to contribute to our country’s housing crisis. The arrival of Gary Norman and Steve Morris – both from Bedford based housing association bpha - will kick start the delivery of our strategy by developing our own and land-led pipeline of new schemes.

Speaking of the appointments of Gary and Steve, our Executive Director of Development and Growth Sarah Ireland said “I am delighted to welcome Gary and Steve to Accent, who each bring with them 20 years of housing development experience. They will set plans in motion to ramp up our programme to deliver 500 new affordable homes a year, and will look to forge innovative partnerships with other housing associations and contractor partners to help realise this commitment.”

Our new impetus on development has already seen positive results with the purchase of a sustainable private development site in Ramsey, Peterborough; an area that currently has over 300 homeless households. We will unlock the stalled site, which was granted outline planning consent in 2008, to ensure the delivery of 85 new affordable homes for people in need. The homes – due to start in September 2019 – will be a mix of rent and shared ownership.

In addition to these development targets, we will continue to seek funding opportunities and work in partnership with other housing associations to deliver more homes.

We are also pleased to announce that we will be working with Together Housing and Wakefield and District Housing (WDH), as a strategic partner of Homes England in the first wave of partnerships which will ramp up the building of affordable homes. Our partnership will mean that 1,152 additional new affordable homes will be commissioned by March 2022.

Chief Executive Paul Dolan said “This is an exciting time for Accent. The arrival of Sarah Ireland to the role of Executive Director of Development and Growth last autumn, and now the recruitment of Gary and Steve, signals a new dawn for us. Housing associations fundamentally change and improve lives for the better, and we are delighted to already see positive results, and new opportunities to expand our portfolio of homes which will allow us to respond positively to our country’s housing crisis.”