Joint venture to build up to 800 London homes a year

Genesis Housing Group has formed a joint venture with a commercial developer to build social housing in London.

The deal with Development Securities will build one or two mixed-use schemes of 400 or so homes each every year. The homes will be owned and managed by Genesis.

The joint venture is presently negotiating on two sites in central London.

Genesis chief executive Anu Vedi said the partnership, which does not yet have a name, was a response to the London mayor’s London Plan. The plan says all new commercial developments must also include homes.

Vedi said: “This relationship will help us secure a flow of development projects to accelerate the provision of much-needed social housing for our capital city.”

Development Securities director Paul Willis said: “We have high hopes that this relationship will secure projects of mutual interest and we are already working on a number of opportunities.”

Development Securities has recently raised £30m from its shareholders to fund new investment and Genesis is confident it has the balance sheet capacity to support at least one or two schemes a year.

Meanwhile, Genesis has received planning permission for the £450m regeneration of the Grahame Park estate in Barnet.

The scheme is being developed with Notting Hill Housing Group and will provide the estate’s 5000 residents with 2940 new homes to buy or rent.

n Two New Deal for Communities projects are to invest a total of nearly £17m in the London boroughs of Brent and Southwark.

Brent’s South Kilburn NDC got £9.85m from the London Regional Housing Board towards the construction of the first tranche of homes. It’s the first phase of a £770m scheme to regenerate South Kilburn, north-west London.

Aylesbury NDC in Elephant & Castle, Southwark, was awarded £7.013m by the Government Office for London for the first phase of renewal works on the 2742-home Aylesbury Estate in south-east London.