Paying £1,000 to construction mental health charity Lighthouse Club could help housebuilders unlock cheap finance under a Homes England-backed green loans scheme.
Under round two of the Greener Homes Alliance, unveiled yesterday (3 April), the housing watchdog and Octopus Real Estate have committed £150m in discounted finance for small and medium-sized housebuilders building energy-efficient developments.
To qualify for a 1.25 per cent discount on the borrowing rate, schemes must comply with at least four of 10 new social and environmental benchmarks. Those complying with six or more will get a 2 per cent reduction.
One of the criteria involves pledging at least £1,000 to Lighthouse Club and displaying the charity’s materials on site.
Octopus Real Estate said: “In order to demonstrate that the developer has met this criteria, they will need to demonstrate to us – before we lend – that they have donated a sum in excess of £1,000 to Lighthouse and have spread awareness of the charity through their supply chain.
“We need evidence of an initial donation, and we would hope that developers will continue to support the charity going forward.”
Sarah Bolton, chief executive of Lighthouse, told Construction News: “Developers pledging a minimum of £1,000 will be able to tangibly show that they care about the emotional, physical and financial wellbeing of their site workers, and by doing so, alongside completing the other criteria checks, be eligible for a significant reduction in interest rates.
“For every £1 donated to the Lighthosue Charity in 2024, we produced a social value of £12.19. The Greener Homes Alliance has the potential to create a huge positive difference in the wellbeing of construction workers throughout the country.”
Octopus said that it had chosen Lighthouse because of the depth and impact of its work in the construction sector.
Other criteria developers can opt for to qualify for the Greener Homes Alliance funding include paying the real living wage to all workers on site and providing more than a quarter of their scheme’s homes as affordable.
Developers could also choose to include modern methods of construction (MMC) in the fabric of the buildings, achieve an average SAP score of 92+ (EPC A), a biodiversity net gain of over 20 per cent or more than 90 per cent of waste from the site avoiding landfill
They could also qualify by showing that their schemes involve the regeneration of a brownfield site, that more than half of new homes will be “zero bills ready”, and that potable water usage will be reduced to less than 110 litres per person per day.
The new criteria come on top of baseline key performance indicators that must be met for a firm to be considered under the scheme.
These require that all homes built must be fossil fuel free and have an average SAP score of 85 or above.
Lighthouse’s tie-up with the alliance provides a boost to the charity, almost 18 months after it made headlines for the wrong reasons.
In October 2023 it rebranded a Christmas fundraising lunch after its burlesque theme was criticised as “straight from the dark ages” by the chair of National Women in Property.
That episode came three months after Construction News revealed the charity had lost £217,000 on an investment portfolio of £1.75m, in 2022.
Lighthouse’s latest accounts show that it made a healthier return of £82,000 on the investment, held with wealth manager Brewin Dolphin, during 2023 thanks to a rally in stock markets.
Homes England has contributed £42m to the latest phase of the alliance scheme from its Home Building Fund.
Marcus Ralling, the agency’s chief investment officer, said the alliance would help support small and medium-sized housebuilders, which were “crucial to building a diverse and resilient housing sector”.
“Small and medium housebuilders play a vital and essential role in driving the delivery of much-needed, new and sustainable homes,” he said.
Andy Scott, co-head of debt at Octopus Real Estate, said the criteria had been carefully drawn up to maximise the effectiveness of the programme.
“We are extremely proud of the impact our Greener Homes Alliance initiative has had when it comes to supporting developers looking to make greener decisions for their projects, and we’ve spent a lot of time working out the new criteria with Homes England to make sure the next phase is as impactful as possible,” he said.
The first phase of the Greener Homes Alliance, which was launched four years ago, saw 550 environmentally friendly homes built through 20 separate housebuilder loans totalling £150m.