Homes England, formally known as the Homes and Communities Agency, are set to begin a drive with the aim of boosting housing numbers across the UK. The vision of delivering new homes faster to ease the shortage of homes will be helped by the launch of a procurement initiative at the end of this month, to support the annual target of 300,000 new homes per annum by the mid-2020s set out by Government.

Housing can be a key barrier to economic growth, and it’ll be a huge focus of our Economic Growth Conference’s this year including this weeks Oxford Cambridge Corridor and September’s West Yorkshire events.

The new Multidisciplinary and Technical Services Frameworks will provide a wider choice a great access to professional, design and technical services to support Homes England and other public organisations to speed up the delivery of new homes across the country.

It’ll be a one-stop shop to procure a wide range of integrated technical and design services from a single source, with the multidisciplinary frameworks including:

  • Five regionally based frameworks which set out to provide planning, master planning and consultation services with the view of helping to gain planning permission across Home England sites – enabling regional delivery teams to engage and connect with consultants who have sound regional knowledge and experience to further enhance applications submitted.
  • A frameworks for project, cost management and development monitoring which will aid investment activities and help with more general project and cost management advices aligned to the delivery of regeneration and development projects.
  • Site survey and asbestos frameworks to provide specialist and specific services to help Homes England prepare brownfield land for development much quicker than currently.

Homes England believe the frameworks will allow them to promote and encourage strong working partnerships in a time where private and public sector collaboration will be key to unlocking potential growth across our nation. It will ensure specialist and expert teams are working across projects to maximise the opportunities, whilst also allowing for skills and innovation solutions to be shared more widely through partnership working.

Stephen Kinsella, Director for Land at Homes England, said: ”This will be the 5th generation of our multidisciplinary framework and our biggest yet, demonstrating Homes England’s expanded role in bringing together land and expertise to speed up the building of new homes. We want to create strong working relationships with a wider range of companies who can provide valuable technical advice and design expertise to help accelerate housing development, deliver value for money and great places to live. To date more than 300 public bodies have taken advantage of the frameworks. For example, local authorities will have access to the frameworks to enable them to procure technical services to improve the provision of new homes for local residents.”