A HOUSING association in Bromsgrove has agreed a £100 million loan from NatWest to support the delivery of its investment plans in existing and new homes across the community.
Bromsgrove District Housing Trust (BDHT) will use the funds to build additional affordable homes in and around the town as well as boost its programme of improvements to existing homes to ease energy bills for residents.
The 4,400-home housing association will use the funds agreed with NatWest to refinance existing debt as well as adding additional finance to be able to invest in affordable home provision.
Previous debt was a mixture of short and long-term fixed tenures. One aim of the process was to introduce a more balanced debt profile across the short, medium and long terms.
BDHT’s loan consists of a £40m fixed-term, loan-linked ISDA split into three tranches with tenures of 10-15 years. A loan-linked ISDA is a financial instrument to help manage interest rate risk. There are also two Revolving Credit Facilities (RCFs) of £40m over 7 years and £20m over 10 years.
The housing association has also secured £4.9 million from the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund. The new funding deal with NatWest ensures bdht can match-fund this amount and push towards its goal of improving the energy efficiency of all its homes to at least EPC level C by 2030.
Lisa Martin, Director of Resources at bdht, said: “We are very pleased to have arranged this new funding deal with NatWest and are grateful to the team there for all their support.
“It is particularly important to us to have maximised our financial capacity, allowing us to invest in improving existing homes so energy bills for our tenants are kept to a minimum.
“This funding also means we are well on the way to meeting our aim of building new affordable homes to help tackle the housing crisis in and around Bromsgrove.”
NatWest is one of the largest lenders to the social housing sector in the UK, and this new funding package contributes towards the banking group’s commitment to lend £7.5 billion to the social housing sector by the end of 2026. The number has been upgraded from £5 billion announced in March 2024 as levels of demand for housing increase.
Dharmesh Patel, Associate Director Housing Finance, Real Estate Finance at NatWest, said: “We are pleased to support bdht with funding which enables the housing association to continue investing in its housing portfolio and develop new affordable housing for communities across the West Midlands.”
