Western Challenge agrees 29m package with Lloyds TSB

The facility includes £15m of new funding and an existing loan of £14m.

The Dorset-based association will spend the cash on its development programme over the next two years.

The existing £14m included a £5m revolving credit facility, which allows the association to repay money and then borrow it again. This is cheaper than a new loan and the revolving facility has been extended by five years as part of the new deal.

Western Challenge will complete 800 new homes under its 2004-6 development programme in Gloucester, Cheltenham, Reading and Newport, Isle of Wight.

About half of the new homes will be for key workers, predominately those employed by the NHS.

The new money will be used to extend an existing key-worker scheme in Reading and to fund a new development in Cheltenham.

Martin Lucas, finance director of Western Challenge, said: “The revolving credit facility gives us more flexibility to draw and repay the money. The new money will be used to fund our development programme – we’ve had heavy involvement in key worker schemes since 1997 and we tend to do extensions of the schemes we’re already involved in.”

Western Challenge owns about 6500 properties across the South of England and the Midlands.