News / Events
New affordable housing manager appointed
10th May 2012
A group affordable housing projects manager has been appointed as part of an expansion at Persimmon Homes.
Amelia McCann, who has over 20 years’ public and private sector experience in the affordable housing market, has taken on the newly-created role.
She will manage and ensure delivery of the Affordable Housing Programme 2011-15 across England for Persimmon and Westbury Partnerships.
The group was awarded an allocation from the HCA for the programme of £20.6m to provide around 2,000 new properties.
Previously head of development for Bromford Group, Amelia has also worked as an associate with EC Harris, managing consultancy services to developers and housing associations on their affordable housing needs and maximising grant potential.
She is vice-chair and a board member for St. Basil’s Housing Association, the Birmingham-base charity specialising in working with homeless people.
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Westbury Partnerships achieves ISO 9001 accreditation
7th December 2011
Westbury Partnerships has become one of the few firms of its kind to achieve ISO 9001 quality assurance certification.
The company underwent a comprehensive review of its business to reach this international standard of management.
“We are delighted to receive ISO 9001 - particularly as few major housebuilders achieve this recognition,” said Ashley Lane, group partnerships director of Persimmon Homes, parent group to Westbury Partnerships.
“This brings the benefit of independently certified quality assurance documentation and procedures to complement our corporate financial strengths, development expertise and sales and marketing capabilities.
"We already have thorough quality assurance procedures within Persimmon which are applied across all of our companies. However, we recognise that public and voluntary sector clients often prefer to see evidence of independent quality certification, hence the reason for going the extra mile for Westbury Partnerships.
"Whilst ISO 9001 is often provided by contractors, it is less usual from major homebuilders. Therefore we will now be on a more level playing field with our contractor competitors when bidding for public sector land and we also bring to the table our vast financial resources for investment into land and mixed tenure development opportunities, along with dedicated expertise in residential development.
"Our clients now have the added assurance that Westbury Partnerships' management systems are now fully independently certified through ISO 9001."
From 1st January 2012 Westbury Partnerships is to be operated from all 24 regional Persimmon offices in order to offer an expanded service to clients throughout Britain.
Westbury Housing Investments scheme launched
7th December 2011
A ‘first of its kind’ shared equity scheme has been launched in a bid to get the housing market moving.
The ‘Westbury Housing Investments’ initiative, which can be applied to any site subject to a Section 106 agreement, aims to kick-start the supply of affordable homes. In the spirit of the Housing Strategy announced recently by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, this initiative takes a fresh look at Section 106 agreements in an innovative fashion so as to ‘Get Britain Building’ whilst maintaining affordable housing delivery.
Backed by leading housebuilders Persimmon Homes & Charles Church, the scheme takes a unique approach to current market issues and offers a range of benefits to local authorities, social landlords and local communities.
Ashley Lane, Partnerships Director of Persimmon Homes Group, commented: “The majority of affordable/social housing is now provided to RSLs by house builders through Section 106 planning agreements which typically have called for 80% of these homes to be rented, 20% shared ownership.
“The declining property market has meant that the lower values of these rented and shared ownership homes have put sites in jeopardy due to commercial unviability. This has led to developments either being halted or in some cases not even started.”
He said that if the tenure mix of Section 106 sites was changed by introducing shared equity homes in place of rented and shared ownership (typically to 50% rent, 50% shared equity whilst maintaining the total number of homes built), the site could become viable. In addition, aspiring home-owners using shared equity as opposed to shared ownership did not need to find such a large initial deposit and in many cases offered a lower monthly cost.
Westbury Housing Investments also recycles any surpluses arising from ultimate shared equity sales back into the local area to produce more affordable homes. This ‘innovative’ ring-fencing of the surpluses meets the ‘perpetuity’ requirement of many adopted affordable housing policies and does not differ from the situation in conventional RSL shared ownership schemes and the use of staircasing receipts as recycled capital grant funding.
Under the scheme purchasers take out a mortgage for 75% of the property’s selling price and are then given a loan from Westbury Housing Investments for the remaining 25% of equity, interest-free for five years.
In the sixth year the interest is fixed at 1.75% and then increases at a rate of RPI+1% annually for the life of scheme, which is 15 years in total. Residents have the option to staircase their shares up to 100% ownership at anytime over the 15-year duration.
As with conventional Section 106 affordable housing, the shared equity homes will go to appropriate people nominated from the waiting lists of local authorities or their designated agent. This ensures that priority is given to people in housing need and on the waiting list for affordable housing.
The first Westbury Housing Investments site has just started in Braintree, Essex, with others in the pipeline throughout England and Wales.
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For further information please contact: Dr Ashley Lane Group Partnerships Director, Persimmon Homes Group. Tel: 07957 815275
E: Ashley.Lane@persimmonhomes.com
Meet the team evenings
15th March 2011
Two 'meet the team' events were held at Solihull and Bristol when we announced our latest group financial figures, introduced some new members of staff and talked about the challenges we all face in today's housing market. Our guest speaker were Charles Amies and David Warburton, Regional Directors of the Homes and Communities Agency, who made short presentations on the important current issue of ‘Affordable Rent and Flexible Tenancies’.
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Frome ceremony
20th February 2011
Frome pensioner Lillian Cullen-Crossman has helped us to launch the new development which will become her home later this year.
Lillian (86), not only cut the first turf at the new Randolph Road scheme but also provided its name.Lillian suggested Keyford Heights as the title of the 36-home Extra Care development being built by Westbury Partnerships.It will form part of a £16 million re-development which will see more than 100 new affordable properties built by us, working with Flourish Homes.
