Inside the plan for 600 energy-efficient homes in Manchester

Manchester council leaders have approved further funding of £5.1m to advance four new developments by its own company This City to the planning submission stage. The plan is for about 600 new sustainable homes - meaning close to easily accessible public transport links and energy efficient thus reducing residents' overall carbon footprint - of which 20 per cent will be affordable.

New projects include sites in north and east Manchester along with city centre development, all of which will make use of brownfield land to support the creation of ‘much-needed housing’. The city council’s executive was updated on the authority’s overall goal to oversee 10,000 new council, social and genuinely affordable homes by 2031 along with the This City programme.

Public engagement has just begun on two sites - Hyde Road in east Manchester, where around 150 homes will be created and Monsall, north Manchester, where there will be around 175 built in multiple phases. A further two developments include Postal Street in the Northern Quarter for which public engagement will begin early in 2025 with a target start on site during 2025/26 on an estimated 130 homes, as well as Grey Mare Lane in east Manchester, delivering about 150 properties.

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Masterplanning for Grey Mare Lane estate has already been completed as part of a partnership between the city council, Great Places Housing Group, One Manchester and This City to deliver a ‘whole estate regeneration package’ in east Manchester. The first This City development, in Ancoats, started in 2023 and celebrated hitting its highest point of construction - known as ‘topping out’ - in June this year.

No 1 Ancoats Green - formerly known as the Rodney Street development - will deliver 129 homes, including 119 apartments and 10 townhouses, 30pc of which will be made available at the Manchester Living Rent with completion expected in summer 2025. Meanwhile, work has started to create 50 new affordable apartments for the over-55s on the site of the former Chorlton Leisure Centre. There will be 47 social rent apartments in a mix of one and two-bed configurations.

In addition, there will be three neighbourhood apartments, an initiative to help those needing support and adapted accommodation following a hospital stay. These apartments will be leased to the city council. More than £14m is being invested into the scheme through a mix of funding form Homes England, the Greater Manchester Combined Authority and Mosscare St Vincent (MSV) Housing with development scheduled for completion in 2026.

City council leader Coun Bev Craig said: “We are building more council and social homes than at any point in the last two decades.” Councillors were also told of Project 500 - the authority’s scheme to deliver new low carbon affordable housing on smaller brownfield sites across the city in partnership with Manchester’s network of registered housing providers.

MSV has submitted a planning application for a site in Cheetham Hill to bring forward 70 social rent homes - the penultimate project for phase one of Project 500 which will deliver 359 affordable homes with 160 of them for social rent. Phase two of the project is well underway with the first planning submission for the next tranche of 164 affordable houses expected in December.