The Housing Finance Corporation (THFC), an independent not-for-profit finance company that makes loans to over 120 regulated housing associations (HA) throughout the UK, has signed a housing regeneration facility for £345m with the European Investment Bank (EIB) on December 4 2009.
The loan was signed at a meeting of the British Irish Council which took place in Newcastle County Down, attended by all four senior housing ministers from England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales.
In the wake of banks and building societies drawing in their horns and lending less for more, this facility to housing associations provides 20-30 year funding for local regeneration schemes.
The facility draws on THFC’s ability to identify local community regeneration schemes across the nation. Funded schemes are by no means confined to the largest cities and stretch from Dundee via Holyhead, Londonderry, Newry, Penzance to Luton and Harlow. In all, some 35 housing associations will benefit from this facility.
THFC expects completion of the underlying credit processes and the sign-up of the underlying loans to the HAs to be completed in the next couple of months with drawdown of the EIB funding throughout 2010.
Piers Williamson, CEO of THFC, said: “The profile of these Housing Associations is right across the size spectrum. The common theme is that we have been able to bring the considerable benefit of EIB funding to some of the most important community regeneration projects going on across the UK at the moment. This will give these Housing Associations certainty to deliver in areas of real housing need.”
