In the last month, we’ve continued to make sure and steady progress towards getting the Oakfield Terrace development on site. Since June, a lot of the steps we were waiting for have been achieved, including an updated valuation of the scheme, and making positive progress with our funding strategy to bring Oakfield Terrace into community ownership.
In order to deliver the Oakfield Terrace scheme, we’ve adopted a mechanism that is a bit like a surrogate pregnancy: it’s our baby, but we need some help to deliver it! What that means is that while Liverpool City Council own the terrace buildings, our development partner Your Housing Group, and our construction partner Penny Lane Builders will deliver the community’s design on our behalf. Homebaked CLT will then be able to ‘buy back’ the scheme once the building work is complete.
This means that the funding we are securing at this stage, although guaranteed, will not be able to be drawn down until practical completion of the scheme.
We have a range of conditions set out by LCC which we need to meet in order to get on site and ultimately ‘buy back’ Oakfield Terrace, and we are now working through the last of these. With the support of our fantastic board, Tom is leading on our registration as a Registered Provider of Social Housing – which is a task and a half! Britt is continuing to strengthen our financial strategy, and Naomi is preparing our community share offer – which will allow local people to become co-owners of the scheme.
Every day we are getting a step closer to starting on site, and to #GetTheTerraceDone!