Housing association secures £50m Natwest deal

A prominent housing association which provides homes across the Liverpool City Region and North West has secured a £50m deal with NatWest to help develop an additional 1,700 affordable properties over the next five years.Livv Housing Group, which provides 13,000 homes across Liverpool City Region and the North West, will also use the finance package to retrofit existing properties to improve their EPC rating.The company employs almost 500 people from its base in Prescot, Knowsley.Howard Roberts, executive director of finance and property at Livv Housing Group, said: “We’re delighted to have agreed this new finance package with NatWest; it really represents a key milestone for us and demonstrates how far we’ve come over the last few years.”The package will enable us to not only build more new, affordable homes for local people but also to fund investment work into existing homes to improve energy efficiency and EPC ratings, benefiting our existing customers.”As well as providing first-class homes to rent or buy, we work with our partners to support our customers and communities, tackling tough issues like unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, mental health and anti-social behaviour. Our new partnership with NatWest will help us to build on our work over the last few years and drive forward our future growth and investment ambitions.”Martin Skinner, director, housing finance at NatWest, added: “Livv Housing Group’s improvement journey is a real testament to the organisation’s desire and determination to provide the very best housing and support they can for the people of the Liverpool City Region and the North West.”Like Livv, NatWest is dedicated to supporting our customers, colleagues and communities and it is fantastic to be able to come together on a new finance package that will help create more affordable and sustainable homes across the region, as well as supporting the people that live in them.”We look forward to continuing to work closely with the team at Livv and seeing them thrive in their ambitions.”