Housing Development

Ownhome- Helping You Buy A Home

Ownhome is a brand new scheme designed to give you a helping hand onto the property ladder by arranging funding for up to 100% of the value of your home.

Ownhome is provided by a partnership between Places For People Housing Association and The Co-Operative Bank. Ownhome is part funded by the Government, and is designed to help people who cannot currently afford to purchase suitable accommodation, make their first step on to the property ladder.

For more information please see the downloadable poster, flyer and brochure at the bottom of the page.

New Key Worker Shared Ownership Housing Available- Kinver House, 42 Elthorne Road

Five penthouse apartments with spectacular views of London are now available on a part buy/part rent basis for Key Workers. Convenient location 5 minutes walk from Archway station and excellent green credentials.

For more information please visit Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association's website, see Useful Websites on the right of the page. Alternatively contact Steve Patching on 020 8709 4352 or steve.patching@bgvpha.org.uk

The following keyworker groups are eligible for assistance:

• Clinical staff employed by the National Health Service (NHS) (excluding doctors and dentists)
• Teachers, including PE teachers and Early Years/nursery teachers
• Police Officers and Community Support Officers in specified forces
• Frontline police staff (civilians) may also be eligible in some areas
• Prison Officers and some Prison Staff in prisons in specified areas
• Probation Officers, Senior Probation Officers and Probation Service Officers
• Local Authority (LA)/Local Education Authority (LEA)/NHS Social Workers
• LA Therapists (including Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists)
• LA Educational Psychologists
• LA/LEA/NHS nursery nurses
• LA Planners
• LA Clinical Staff
• Uniformed staff, below principal level, in Fire and Rescue Services
• Connexions Personal Advisors
• Armed Forces personnel and some civilian MoD personnel (clinical staff, MoD police officers and uniformed staff in the Fire and Defence Service)
• Highway Agency Traffic Officer Staff
• LA Environmental Health Officers/Practitioners

Housing Development

The council works in partnership with housing associations and developers operating in Islington, to build affordable housing in the borough.

Despite Islington’s relatively small size and location, we have a very large housing development programme. Since 2004 we have built 1683 new affordable homes in the borough. These homes were delivered through a number of large-scale housing developments, including the Arsenal Stadium, which is the largest regeneration scheme in the UK.

We are expecting to build a further 900 new units by 2009. These will be located throughout Islington on a mixture of small and large scale sites.

Over the next five to ten years, Islington will benefit from a number of regeneration projects throughout the borough, including:

• Archway redevelopment
• Old Street Roundabout
• Mount Pleasant post office site

These projects will provide an excellent opportunity to regenerate areas of the borough, and increase the amount of private and affordable housing and commercial and employment space in Islington.

Affordable housing is developed through a mix of:

• planning policy (Section 106 agreements) where all residential developments with ten properties or more have to contain 50% affordable housing
• development of council disposal sites
• sites identified and developed by housing associations

Funding is secured through the Housing Corporation grants and housing association borrowing. The Housing Corporation is a Government organisation that funds and regulates housing associations.

Housing Associations

There are currently over forty associations operating in the borough managing approximately 15,000 homes.

Housing associations are not for profit companies. They are are governed by a committee or board of management that can include tenants representatives from local authorities and community groups, professional business people and politicians.

Some Housing Associations are founded to meet particular need groups, such as people with disabilities or ethnic minority communities.

For more information about Housing Associations operating in Islington, click on the Developing Housing Associations link under the main navigation list on the left side of this page.