£207m will now be allocated to 6,618 new and affordable homes, with £241m available for 5,144 that have conditional approval

The Homes and Communities Agency has approved funding for 91 housing developments under the first wave of the government’s £925m Kickstart programme, announced in July.

A further 63 schemes have been approved for the programme, which aims to get stalled residential developments off the ground, subject to “further conditions being met” or “requiring further consideration”.

As a result, £207m will now be allocated to directly fund 6,618 new and affordable homes. A further £241m could be allocated to another 5,144 homes, if the 63 conditionally approved schemes get final sign-off.

Thirty-five schemes were not approved for funding as they did not meet the HCA’s criteria for the programme, “particularly on design and value for money grounds”.

The agency added that developers had withdrawn 81 of the 270 schemes because of the need to complete homes by March 2011, or because they no longer felt the need for public sector support. However, developers resubmitted 46 schemes for a second round of Kickstart.

Schemes that could qualify under the first tranche of Kickstart funding have to be non-viable in the current economic climate and developers would have to complete homes by March 2011.

That means there remains about £500m of government funding for the next round of Kickstart. The HCA confirmed that it has now received over 660 bids for funding under this second round. These schemes, which could unlock up to 55,000 homes, will now be subject to the same level of scrutiny as the successful schemes under round one.

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