Barrow gets £16.6m housing boost

Accelerating the delivery of the 1,350-home Marina Village and bolstering Westmorland and Furness Council’s planning team will be two prime uses of the cash, which comes from the government’s £200m Barrow Transformation Fund.

Westmorland and Furness Council decided this week to plug £16.6m into driving housebuilding in Barrow – an amount takes up nearly all of the £19.5m annually committed by national government to the town through the specialist fund.

Most of the £16.6m will go towards Marina Village, with £11.4m allocated for the council and ECF project. This money will be used to support the detailed design, masterplanning, viability work, technical studies, and planning applications required to deliver the first phase of the scheme.

Marina Village sits on 67 acres of brownfield land on the Barrow waterfront and has been the subject of an intensive remediation effort. Homes England, one of three partners that makes up ECF alongside Muse and Legal & General, has committed £24.8m in grants for the scheme.

Westmorland and Furness Council Leader Cllr Jonathan Brook described Marina Village as “key to the future sustainability and viability of Barrow”.

“Unlocking this former industrial land and seeing it transformed, into a thriving residential community in the centre of Barrow, close to shops, places of work, education and transport links, will be fantastic for the town,” Brook said.

The second largest allocation from the £16.6m is for the housing standards team at Westmorland and Furness Council, with £2.71m set aside to grow that division. This team will look to improve existing homes in the area, raising the standard of the private rental sector in Barrow, and bringing 75 long-term empty properties back into use.

The remaining £2.56m will create an Accelerated Housing Delivery Team within the council. Comprised of those with planning, legal, highways, flood risk, and ecology expertise, this team will help improve planning submissions for Barrow projects.

Brook said: “Thousands of homes will be required over the coming decades, to ensure Barrow can fulfil its role in the defence nuclear enterprise. So, the creation of a dedicated Accelerated Housing Delivery Team, will be equally important.

“Working proactively with developers to reduce delays, improve the quality of planning applications, unlock stalled sites and speed up the delivery of housing schemes in Barrow, will go a long way towards attracting and retaining a growing workforce and their families,” he said.

Barrow’s unique position as a hub for defence giant BAE Systems is the reason for national government’s focus on the town. The Barrow Transformation Fund, which is meant to enable the delivery of at least 7,000 homes over the next 20 years, is a leading contributor to the work to breathe new life into the town.