Birmingham council to turn garages and pubs into 131 new homes

Birmingham City Council’s cabinet will be asked to approve a two year house-building programme worth almost £19 million at a meeting soon, it has been reported.

The programme will see the council’s house building arm Birmingham Municipal Housing Trust (BMHT) deliver 107 new homes for social rent and 24 homes for sale on small sites such as former garages and pubs.

It will also provide up to 19 apprenticeship opportunities and around £0.66 million of income to support the Building Birmingham Scholarship initiative.

Peter Griffiths, Birmingham City Council’s cabinet member for housing and homes, said: “BMHT has built around 2,500 new homes in the last three years and has built more than 20 per cent of all new homes in Birmingham since 2011. Despite huge pressures on the council, we are determined to tackle the housing crisis - building new homes, working with housing partners in the region and pursuing creative solutions to address different housing needs.

“This latest programme contains mostly small schemes - building houses on redundant garage courts, municipal depots and the sites of former pubs across the city. In order to deliver this, we will encourage smaller contractors to re-enter the house building market using a relatively new system which allows us to take a flexible approach with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

“Alongside this much-needed investment into smaller companies, the scheme will also see the development of 19 apprenticeship opportunities and £660,000 investment into our scholarship initiative. This is a win for house building, a win for the economy and a win for training.”