Case study VIVID: building ambitious new grant-funded homes

With a grant of just over £88m, the housing association committed to delivering an additional 1,408 new home starts by the end of March 2022.

From: Homes England

VIVID and Homes England partnership

VIVID was one of seven strategic partners announced by Homes England in October 2018. With a grant of just over £88m, the housing association committed to delivering an additional 1,408 new home starts by the end of March 2022.

Since then VIVID has upped the ante in its

development programme, building 1,372 new homes in the year 19/20 to address the housing shortage in its operating area of Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey and West Sussex – an increase of 37% on the previous year.

The longer-term security of funding through the strategic partnership has helped drive forward VIVID’s social rent ambitions. Grant certainty has enabled VIVID to deliver an increased level of affordable homes on sites where this meets local demand and aspiration.

The housing association’s acquisition of private developer Bargate Homes in 2019 has furthered its ability to deliver land-led development opportunities: it now has control over enough land and development sites to deliver 10,000 new homes, helping to make a real contribution to the housing supply in the south.

A new joint venture with modular housing developer BoKlok

Following this, VIVID has also recently announced a new joint venture with modular housing developer BoKlok the sustainable, quality low-cost home provider, jointly owned by Skanska and IKEA. The five-year agreement will see a joint approach to land, planning and the delivery of new modular homes. BoKlok and VIVID are working collaboratively to deliver 300 new modular homes per year on sites throughout Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire and West Sussex.

This partnership demonstrates VIVID’s approach to meeting Homes England’s cross cutting themes of both increased supply of new homes and increased use of modern methods of construction.

Mike Shepherd, Director of New Business and Development at VIVID, said:

The biggest benefit of the strategic partnership is that we have been able to increase our supply of social rented and shared ownership homes, and we’ve been able to deliver earlier on our VIVID affordable home delivery plan.

This success led Homes England to further increase our funding from £88m to £176m in 2019, demonstrating its confidence in our delivery. The partnership allows us to support the wellbeing of our current and future customers by addressing housing need in our region. It is also helping us to fulfil our ambition to have a housebuilding programme of over 17,000 homes in the next 10 years.