Housing associations across the West Midlands have joined together in a bid to help the new devolved authority deliver thousands of houses.
The West Midlands Housing Association Partnership—formally agreed last week—represents housing associations with a total of 120,000 homes in the core authority area, with 6,630 homes built by associations last year.
Together they add £600m to the regional economy annually and employ 18,500 people.
The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) covers an area that runs from Telford and Wolverhampton in the west to Coventry and Nuneaton in the East, and from Tamworth in the North to Redditch in the South.
Partnership chair, Kevin Rodgers, chief executive of WM Housing Group, said: ‘We have a powerful and unprecedented commitment to collectively engage the new authority in discussion about how we can help inform and then deliver its ambitions for housing in the region.
‘Together we have more than a 60 billion pounds of capacity, and we want to deploy as much of that as possible in the region to deliver the high quality homes the West Midlands needs, and to create vital jobs and growth.’
‘We also want to support wider agendas around health, skills, employment and fuel poverty,’ he added.
Cllr Bob Sleigh, chair of the WMCA, said : ‘It is great to see housing associations come together in partnership in a way that will truly support the work of the newly created West Midlands Combined Authority.’
