MIL-OSI United Kingdom: MOU signed with Homes England to help deliver city centre vision

Source: City of Plymouth

Plymouth’s ambitions to provide thousands of homes in the city centre have taken a step closer with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Homes England.

Council leader Tudor Evans and Homes England CEO Eamonn Boylan signed the partnership document which is the next step in strengthening the working relationship between the two organisations.

A new strategic partnership will accelerate the delivery of high-quality homes in Plymouth, supporting a transformational regeneration of the city centre and surrounding areas. These homes will play a key role in unlocking the economic potential of recent dockyard investments and help create a vibrant city where people can live, work, eat, shop, and socialise.

This initiative aligns with the UK Government’s Strategic Defence Review, which identifies defence as a new engine for national growth. The Continuous At Sea Deterrent programme represents a generational investment in national security—and Plymouth is set to benefit directly.

“Plymouth is at the forefront of a new era of economic opportunity,” said Tudor Evans. “By investing in affordable, high-quality housing, we’re not only supporting our defence capabilities but also creating a thriving, inclusive city for future generations.”

The provision of affordable homes is central to retaining local talent, attracting new families, and ensuring that all communities benefit from this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

Our city centre currently has around 800 homes in it. The top 20 English cities have an average of 8,000 homes, and regeneration over the last 20 years in Newcastle, Manchester, Salford, Sheffield and Leeds has shown that more housing in city centres plays a key part in rejuvenating them.

City centres need to be more than shops, they need to be about culture, leisure, events and festivals, and places to live. There are also 8,000 people on the housing list and while the city centre was built for retail after the war, now is the time to bring people to live in the city centre again.

The proposal is for a shared delivery plan to work together over five years to deliver a strategy for a series of transformative investments, acquisitions and developments which are rooted in the Plymouth and South West Devon Joint Local Plan.

Interventions are designed to act a catalyst and market-making investments, that will allow the public sector to create the right conditions and confidence for the private sector to invest and deliver the wider regeneration of the city centre.

Councillor Evans added: “We have been working with Homes England on our vision for the city centre and this is another important step along the road to making a vision a reality.

“With change of this scale in the pipeline, we need to set out and confirm common goals, get clarity of what we are working towards and be clear about how we are going to bring others along on the journey.”

Eamonn Boylan, Chief Executive of Homes England, said: “Our new Memorandum of Understanding with Plymouth City Council is an important step in strengthening our commitment to the area.

“We’ll work side-by-side with the council to help achieve their vision for the city centre and support them to deliver 10,000 new homes for the people of Plymouth.”

Extensive work is underway to develop shared ambitions with the agreed shared outcomes. They are:

• Pioneering Urban Regeneration: Redefining the city centre as a dynamic hub of activity, focusing on homes and culture and diversification.
• Delivering Nationally Significant Urban Regeneration: The city centre is nationally significant as a post war response to planning and urban design. Options will be considered to unlock a nationally significant urban extension in the heart of the city centre and look at how models can be pioneered that can be replicated elsewhere
• Fostering Sustainable Development: The partners will consider ways to create a model of urban development that minimises environmental impact while maximising community benefits.
• Empowering Local Businesses and Unlocking Private Investment: By strategically deploying government funding and leveraging private sector expertise, the vision is for a city centre that encourages market-led private sector investment and development. This includes working with landowners, leaseholders and occupiers to identify opportunities for joint investment.
• Championing Social Justice via the Growth Alliance Plymouth (GAP) Through targeted initiatives and inclusive policies, there is potential to improve access to quality housing, education, healthcare, and employment opportunities.
• Catalysing Private Sector-Led Development: Strategically deploying government funding and leveraging private sector expertise to encourage market led private sector investment and development.
• Linking delivery to future planning policy: Homes England will work with the Council, Department for Transport, and MHCLG to shape a masterplan for Plymouth that delivers sustainable growth across all housing types and tenures. This will require an ambitious planning framework and a supply chain capable of delivering high quality homes and a population that can afford to live and work in Plymouth. The GAP work will continue to focus on skills, training and education that underpin these broader themes.
• Embedding long term delivery goals into ways of working. The GAP programme will be the framework from which resourcing, delivery outcomes and ambition are embedded into the Council.

This ambitious work programme will be overseen by a Strategic Investment and Regeneration Board attended by senior representatives from the Council and Homes England.

The Council has embarked on a number of transformational projects designed to inject life, new uses and new visitors into the city centre. As well as the transforming the public realm of Old Town Street and New George Street, Armada Way, other projects in the pipeline include the former Civic Centre which is destined to be a city centre campus with a focus on blue/green skills as well as homes.