Torus secures £217 mln to build affordable homes in Liverpool

Torus Group, a social housing company based in the north west of England, has secured over £217 million in funding from three lenders to build 1,000 new affordable homes a year in Liverpool and surrounding areas.

“This significant funding will allow us to continue building much-needed affordable homes in the region and provide services that help people to thrive and live securely and independently”, said Peter Fieldsend, Chief Financial Officer, Torus.

NatWest Group is providing a £100 million revolving credit facility, Santander is providing £75 million and Barclays £42.5 million. The loan terms vary between three and five years.

Santander UK said that “the funding will facilitate the improvement of existing housing and the continued development of much-needed new affordable homes”, while Barclays said it had agreed to provide financing as “a commitment to social housing and our desire to help foster the thriving communities that Torus helps support.”

“It’s great to lend £100m to Torus Group, which strengthens our long-term partnership, and ensures much-needed affordable homes are built in the North West of England,” said Martin Skinner, director for housing finance, commercial mid-market, NatWest.

The NatWest Group announced earlier this year that it intends to provide £5 billion lending to the UK social housing sector over three years to improve living conditions and support a pipeline of new homes. The new pledge takes total lending to UK housing associations to over £11 billion between 2020 and 2026. By the end of August this year, NatWest had reached £2.8 billion of its £5 billion goal.

Torus Group had already said it would invest £1 billion in Liverpool and the region in the next five years.  

Last month the group commissioned a report from Avison Young on the affordability of housing in Liverpool, which showed that there is a serious shortage of genuinely affordable homes in the city.

The report also found that residents in the most deprived areas spend as much as 42% of their income on rent, well above the 30% benchmark and over double the 20% Liverpool social rent cap. Average rents in the city have increased by 69% in the past ten years compared to 46% in the rest of England.

“The report’s findings are startling and underline the need for more genuinely affordable homes across Liverpool, especially in neighbourhoods where household incomes are lower than the city average”, said Steve Coffey, Group CEO, Torus. “We need to increase the supply of genuinely affordable housing and to do this we need a higher amount of genuine public subsidy to support the level of investment that housing associations like Torus make when building urgently-needed new homes.”