£74m to unlock next Ebbsfleet Garden City phase

Homes England has completed a £74m deal that will unlock the next phase of development at Ebbsfleet Garden City in Kent.The £74m will fund a range of infrastructure works that include earthworks to fill in a lake to prepare the land for the development of more than 5,000 new homes.Infrastructure works will unlock 657 acres of land that will be used to develop up to 5,290 new homes – accounting for about a third of the total Ebbsfleet Garden City housing development – as well as approximately 180,000 sq ft of commercial development.The Homes England supported enabling works through a loan deal to Henley Camland include preparing land for the development of housing on both the Castle Hill site and the Eastern Quarry at Ebbsfleet.Henley Camland, the residential infrastructure and place-making business which recently purchased the Eastern Quarry site from Landsec, has simultaneously agreed land deals for 2,900 homes to be developed. Some 2,600 of these homes will be delivered by Countryside Properties and Clarion Housing Group in a new joint venture, while and Barratt Homes will built 300 homes on this part of the wider site as a direct result of the works funded by Homes England.Representing one of Homes England’s largest deals of the past 12 months, the £73.97m loan is being made through the Home Building Fund (HBF).More than 1,000 of these new homes at Ebbsfleet will be provided by 2021, with the full scheme due to be completed over the next decade.