London Estate Regeneration Fund
About the fund
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) is offering £50m of capital grant funding. This will be allocated by the Greater London Authority (GLA) to registered providers of social housing.
The funding aims to unlock elements of London estate-regeneration schemes that face unforeseen viability gaps and could not otherwise proceed.
This fund is separate from other government grants, such as the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP). But estate regeneration schemes already receiving such grants can still benefit from this programme, to progress an estate regeneration project.
The fund has a spending window across financial years 2024-2025 and 2025-2026. All funding must be spent before the end of March 2026.
There will be monthly monitoring and reporting of this grant, separate from any other grant funding. The project will also have distinct outcomes.
Eligibility
Register providers of social housing can apply for the fund. Those receiving the grant must be able to:
- confidently show the number of homes they'll deliver and over what timeline in their project schedule of works
- demonstrate compliance with the London AHP requirements, as set out in the Homes for Londoners: AHP 2021-2026 Funding Guidance, and associated funding agreement. Completed projects will be subject to the GLA’s compliance-audit process and a post-occupancy evaluation.
Gateway criteria
To be eligible, projects must also provide robust evidence to show they satisfy all of the following gateway criteria:
- Viability: evidence of viability gaps that could not proceed without additional financial support via the London Estate Regeneration Fund.
- Outcomes: grant from London Estate Regeneration Fund should lead to a measurable outcome that does not depend on this funding after financial year 2025-26. (However, the project may have future phases that can be considered separately for funding, and may have 2021-26 AHP funding, which runs to March 2029.) Projects should spend all this funding by March 2026.
- Additionality: the project must deliver additional homes. Bids should clearly outline the number of additional homes (and breakdown of tenure) that will be delivered through the funding; this work should be clearly demarcated from any other source of funding.
- Deliverability: all critical known deliverability concerns or dependencies should be resolvable by additional funding.
- Planning and resident engagement: projects should be at an advanced stage of planning consent and resident engagement.
Key factors
If projects meet the gateway criteria, the GLA will consider them against the following factors:
- Strategic aims: how well they meet the strategic aims of increasing local housing supply, improving housing quality, and developing the local community and a sense of place.
- Value for money: schemes must provide at least acceptable value for money for the taxpayer. That is, the overall social benefits must be greater than or equal to public-sector costs.
- Deliverability: the projects must have defined risk mitigation controls, established track record (local/political credibility), and clear delivery timescales.
- Building safety, design, sustainability and equality diversity and inclusion standards: the projects must meet the GLA’s minimum standards for building safety, design, sustainability, and equality, diversity and inclusion. Consideration will also be given to net-zero contribution, modern methods of construction, and use of small and medium-sized enterprises.
Projects not eligible for funding
Projects are not eligible for funding in either of the following instances:
- The grant is to be used solely for the purposes of retrofit and/or maintenance.
- Projects do not meet existing AHP subsidy control conditions. While the programme has been designed to comply with existing AHP subsidy control regime, grant recipients also have a responsibility to ensure they are not over-compensated from the point of view of subsidy control rules.
- Projects which have already claimed start on site as part of the 2016-23 Affordable Housing Programme are not eligible for this programme.
How to apply
You'll be able to submit your bid through GLA OPS. Bidding opens from 21 October 2024.
There is no deadline for submitting a bid – you can place bids anytime, as and when they are ready. We'll consider projects on individual merit until we’ve committed all the funding. We're expecting the funding to be allocated quickly though, due to the short funding window, so it's worth applying early.
Bidders will get more information about specific GLA OPS requirements when the system is open for bidding. We'll also provide information before this to help you put together bidding information for project proposals.
Projects will be reviewed against the criteria. Applicants meeting the requirements will be asked to submit data in Microsoft Excel format to have a full value-for-money assessment.
Supporting information
- Estates with other demonstrations of engagement but a ballot exemption, such as advanced resident consultation, can also bid for funding.
- Both councils and registered providers can submit a bid.
- Bids can also be submitted for community centres, if that is an element which is causing the viability gap and provision of the funding will allow the regeneration progress.
- Bids can be submitted even if they do not specify an increase in affordable housing in the proposal.
- Partners can bid for a batch of estates where a set of community infrastructure interventions could unlock them all. However, please note that valuation data on each estate will need to be provided for shortlisted projects.
Valuations and viability assessments will be based on phases unlocked by the funding and not phases already started and/or completed.
Housing additionality
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) will record the total number unlocked and then count the market and any other homes that the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) cannot fund, alongside other indicators such as brownfield land use and community facilities.
So housing additionality means the total number of homes being built minus the number being demolished of all tenures.
We will prioritise projects which substantially increase the density, adding to London’s Housing stock and meeting government targets, and that will be a key aspect of shortlisting.
Shortlisted bids will then undergo value for money testing undertaken by MHCLG (including providing a valuation) to further test additionality.
Next steps after bid approval
Bidders will get an email to let them know the outcome of their application.
Successful bidders will enter into a side letter to their AHP 2021-26 contract, setting out monitoring and reporting requirements.
The GLA reserves the right to recover grant in line with rules published in the Recovery of Capital Grant Determination model, as set out in the GLA’s Affordable Housing Capital Funding Guide.
Equality, diversity and inclusion
The GLA is committed to creating a fairer, more equal and more integrated city where all people feel welcome and able to fulfil their potential.
Inclusive London, the Mayor of London’s equality, diversity and inclusion strategy, sets out how he'll help address the inequalities, barriers and discrimination experienced by different groups of people in London.
One key way to reduce inequality is to tackle the housing crisis.
Having more affordable homes in particular will bring significant equalities benefits to Londoners in housing need, who are likelier to be negatively impacted by poverty and higher housing costs.
The following groups disproportionately make up those in housing need:
- households that contain children, including households where one member has the protected characteristic of pregnancy and/or maternity
- Deaf and disabled households
- Black and minority ethnic households
- older and younger Londoners.
More social rented homes will also have positive equalities benefits for those living in social housing – many of whom have protected characteristics.
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