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Working in Partnership

Broadclose Farm

Broadclose Farm, Bude

Our approach to partnering
As one of the largest and most successful housing association groups operating nationwide, The Guinness Partnership has the range and expertise to add value to developers' ambitions throughout the country, whatever the size of the project.

Working in partnership allows us to create genuinely mixed and balanced sustainable communities, utilising the relative strengths of each partner. It helps us provide designs and types of housing that we know meet the aspirations of our residents.

Meeting affordable housing requirements
Our status as an investment partner with the Housing Corporation is supporting a programme of new affordable homes in over 100 local authority areas. The investment team works nationally, improving our efficiency and easing the ability of developers to build relationships of trust with Guinness staff who have high quality development skills and experience.

We now provide a wide range of affordable housing products and market housing, which helps us create genuinely mixed communities to support the objectives of local councils in meeting a range of needs on sites. We promote 'tenure blindness', where affordable homes for rent are indistinguishable from homes for low cost home ownership or outright sale and fully integrated throughout the new community.


Case Study
Our partnership with Linden Homes and Tandridge District Council has created one of the most successful new urban villages in the country at Caterham in Surrey. The £60 million, 348 home mixed tenure, mixed use scheme at the derelict Caterham Barracks produced 96 new affordable homes meeting a range of local needs, plus a wide range of new community facilities and benefits. The scheme has won several awards.

The new operating environment
Both the way social housing is funded and procured is producing radical changes, blurring the boundaries between housebuilders and housing associations. Direct access to the Approved Development Programme for housebuilders has increased the pool of organisations providing social housing but also increased the benefits of housebuilders and housing associations working in partnership.

English Partnerships also encourage partnership bids for their large strategic sites often requiring innovative housing solutions.

Case Study
In 2004 The Guinness Trust and Bellway Homes won an English Partnerships competition to develop the flagship strategic site at Broughton in Milton Keynes. The use of a Modern Method of Construction is playing a part in the provision of this mixed tenure project and assisting in the achievement of an EcoHomes 'excellent' rating.