£45 million HCA loan for Cambridgeshire homes

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) has announced it will provide a £45 million loan to build over 4,500 new homes at a site near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

The Home Building Fund investment will assist Urban&Civic, the developers, accelerate the delivery of the site by funding the provision of vital infrastructure across the 1400 acre former airfield at Alconbury Weald.

Additionally, the former airfield near Huntingdon will provide up to 300,000sq m of floorspace for new businesses within the GCGP LEP’s Enterprise Zone and a range of community facilities, including a secondary school and three new primary schools of which the first opened last year, alongside hundreds of acres of green space.

Gavin Barwell, Housing and Planning Minister, said: “Speeding up house building is one of the key measures we set out in our Housing White Paper, so that we get the right homes built in the right places. The £3 billion Home Building Fund helps do just that by unlocking large housing sites like Alconbury Weald.

“Having visited the development last year, it will not only provide much-needed homes, but also space for new businesses as well as schools and community facilities.”

Nick Walkley, HCA chief executive, added: “This deal is exactly the sort of thing we are here to do – providing the means to realise the full potential of development sites and provide the impetus to enable a real transformation in local housing markets.

“Alconbury Weald is a major development of recognised quality and we will work closely with Urban&Civic to accelerate the new housing and community facilities that this site can delivery for a major growth region of the country.”