Alliance News Issue 6

Alliance News lets you know what’s happening here at Alliance Homes and how we’re helping customers in your neighbourhood.

Responding to the Omicron wave

The effects of the Omicron wave are being felt across the country. Although there are currently high numbers of cases, the country seems to be in a better position than a year ago.

This improved position is reflected in the services we can provide to our customers. We’re currently fully operational and we’re working hard to ensure that we maintain our customer standards.

We’re confident that we can meet our priority of keeping our customers and colleagues safe while providing the best service possible and we are closely monitoring the guidance in order to achieve this.

Marina Gardens sneak peek for councillors

In December we welcomed councillors from North Somerset and Portishead Town Council for a tour of Marina Gardens and its facilities, as well as an advance view of the show homes.

It was a pleasure to show an interested audience all the benefits that such a good-quality development will bring for its occupants. The event was also a chance to discuss the improvements we’re making to the building that will ensure it works smoothly for everyone.

Marina Gardens is our turnkey purchase of 127 high-quality, affordable homes, plus ground floor facilities such as a café, gym and community spaces. If you’d like to know more about Marina Gardens you can find out more on our dedicated page.

The new developments keep coming!

Alliance Homes’ commitment to creating 2,000 new homes over the next ten years took a big step forward in December with the announcement of four new property deals, providing a total of 130 new affordable homes.

71 of those homes will be through two S106 deals with Taylor Wimpey. The first is at Youngwood Lane, Nailsea, where 32 new social rented homes and nine shared ownership homes will be delivered over the next two years. The second deal with Taylor Wimpey is on the Weston Parklands site in Weston-super-Mare, which will see 24 homes for affordable rent and a further six for Shared Ownership over three years. You can read more about this deal here.

The third deal is with Barratt homes for 51 affordable homes, again in Nailsea, this time on Engine Lane. They will be delivered between July this year and 2025.

The final deal is smaller, on the V2 development next to our head office which has been vacant for 14 years. The developer, Complete Project Development, is creating 26 apartments on the site and Alliance is taking eight of these, six for social rent and two for Shared Ownership.

Donation to foodbank

Our Housing Support Officers regularly tell us of the vital work our local foodbanks do to help our customers, and we want to make sure they can continue to provide this valuable assistance.

At Christmas we once again donated £1,000 each to both the Weston and the Clevedon foodbanks. The money was provided from our Springboard Fund which is designed to help our communities recover from the effects of the pandemic. If you’d like to know more about the Springboard Fund you can find out more here.

Micro-grants for local improvements

We want to assist local groups and charities who operate in our neighbourhoods as they help to make our areas better, so in November we launched our Community Micro-Grants scheme.

This new initiative provides local organisations with grants of up to £1,000 to help them develop ideas that will make their communities more vibrant and help people live more independent lives.

The first recipient is Pill in Bloom, who want to help improve their area with greenery and community gardens. Alliance Homes provided them with a planter for the Baltic Place Precinct and our Chief Executive Louise Swain joined them to help get the first plants in. You can read about it here.

Regulator awards us top grade… again

The Regulator of Social Housing has graded Alliance Homes as G1 for governance and V1 for financial viability -- the highest grading a housing association can achieve.

We’re really pleased to yet again receive this grading. To sustain the top grading demonstrates the commitment our colleagues have to delivering our plans and we plan to continue this throughout the coming year.

Keeping in touch

We’ve asked the council to issue this newsletter to you on our behalf but it would be great if you could sign up so we can ensure we’re data compliant and able to keep you up to date. Sign up here.

If you need to raise an issue on behalf of one of your constituents, you can get in touch by emailing councillor@alliancehomes.org.uk