South Somerset Homes wins Housing Corporation ‘Gold Award’ and £90,000 grant from central government
9 June 2006

Local housing association South Somerset Homes are celebrating this week that they, along with their partners in Advantage South West, are the winners of the first ever Housing Corporation ‘Gold Award’ for Excellence.

The Advantage South West partnership was set up three years ago by South Somerset Homes, the Ocean Housing Group, North Devon Homes and Devon & Cornwall Housing to provide factory built timber frame homes that can be erected on site in half the time it takes using traditional construction methods. The partners also joined forces with two manufacturers Frame Homes and Advanced Panel Systems who can jointly supply up to 3000 new houses a year.

Pictured here is Geoff Atkinson (Chief Executive at South Somerset Homes) with the Housing Corporation’s Gold Award for Excellence

The Gold Award has been set up by the Housing Corporation to drive up standards and performance and highlight quicker, smarter and better ways of working across the social housing sector.

To win Advantage South West had to demonstrate how it has used innovation in its development work for new homes through a leading edge approach to procurement of both physical works and building materials.

The Award carries with it a £50,000 prize, which ASW will use to provide a 12-month accessible information programme to show other housing associations across the country how to speed up their affordable house building programmes.

In addition to the Housing Corporation ‘Gold Award’ Advantage South West has been awarded a grant of up to £90,000 to help broaden the consortium into the procurement of capital works such as refurbishment of kitchens and bathrooms and to include other social landlords in the South West. This grant comes from central government via the National Change Agent for Social Housing, and should help South Somerset Homes and its partner housing associations in Advantage South West deliver further significant savings in volume procurement.

Geoff Atkinson, Chief Executive at South Somerset Homes said, “The Government need to provide 3 million additional homes by 2016, and it has said that to achieve this target, housing providers will need to use modern methods of design and construction. This will mean much faster build times; it will encourage the use of sustainable materials and offer reductions in energy use and waste. To drive this home they have specified that at least a quarter of all new publicly funded social housing must be built in this way. All of our new homes will meet these challenges.

“Through the Partnership we have access to a wide range of approved house type designs, which saves us time and money at the planning stage of every new scheme. More importantly because of our combined buying power we have a secure and local and regional supply network involving our constructor partners Connaught, Rok and Mansell.”

Mr. Atkinson went on to say that other providers of affordable homes can share these benefits: “We’ve done all the hard work in terms of designing and obtaining accreditation for the house types and through our manufacturers we can guarantee supply. We also offer other housing associations the opportunity to come and join with us to share the benefits and reap the rewards.”