Esh develops affordable housing pipeline

Esh has seven live sites, from Sheffield to Driffield, that will provide affordable homes, retirement flats and bungalows for registered social housing providers.Several of these developments are heading towards completion by August, including a 44-home project for Sheffield Housing Company and an 82-home scheme in Castleford for Leeds Federated Housing Association and WDH.In Halifax, Esh is leading Together Housing Group a regeneration scheme that will deliver 106 homes for affordable rent on a site that was formerly had three tower blocks.Esh operations director Simon Woodward and business development manager Zoe Popple are driving development in Yorkshire, where Esh expects to deliver more than 400 homes in the next three years.Simon Woodward said: “The injection of government investment in this sector, coupled with a target to build 180,000 new homes through the affordable homes programme into 2026, has opened up major opportunities across our region.“Our teams and partners have worked tirelessly to build high quality homes for our clients through the traditional tendering process, in addition to bringing forward land for development through our land led solution. Achieving this against a backdrop of material shortages and rising costs due to inflationary pressures has been no mean feat.”Esh’s first jointly developed land scheme with Housing 21 and Together Housing Group in Askern, Doncaster, is heading towards completion this summer. The site has 56 houses, 12 bungalows and a three-storey block with 58 retirement flats.Land and partnerships director Laura Devaney said: “We are immensely proud to highlight the success of land led projects throughout the region in recent months with a £25m scheme in Bridlington recently submitted for planning.“A land-led approach alleviates a lot of work for providers, and instead allows them to focus on weighing up site viability for location, rent and sales purposes, while we focus on technical detail and design. Each party focuses on their own expertise and marrying the two together can bring greater success.“Esh is one of just a small number of contractors in the UK who can apply for grants under the current Homes England affordable homes programme 2021-26, therefore we can support registered providers with funding as part of the land led process.”