The Birmingham office of Barclays Corporate has provided Waterloo Housing Group with £100 million in new debt finance to support the company’s plans to build 3,000 affordable homes.
The announcement comes as Barclays completes its move to new Midlands headquarters at the Snow Hill development in central Birmingham.
The financing deal will provide three year’s worth of funding to Waterloo Housing Group, which was formed fifteen months ago following the merger of Eastern Shires Housing Group and Waterloo Housing Association.
It will help enable the group build a further 3,000 homes for families on low incomes in the Midlands for shared ownership schemes and for sale when market conditions improve, as well as creating jobs in the local construction sector.
Waterloo Housing Group currently owns 17,500 homes predominantly in the counties of Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and the West Midlands.
The group’s chief executive David Pickering said: "We are delighted to be building upon our longstanding partnership with Barclays through completion of this major new loan facility.
"The Barclays team brought a sophisticated understanding of our business requirements to the structuring and arrangement of a long-term loan which can be used flexibly by two of our key subsidiaries.
"The facility will enable us to meet our target of providing around 1,000 new affordable homes per year across the entire Midlands region, with the group business plan now fully financed for growth over the next three years."
David Glover, relationship director in the social housing team at Barclays Corporate, said: "The provision of this funding will enable the group to continue with its future plans and ambitions and to grow organically at a time when the provision of housing is much commented on in the sector and the wider world."
Nick Barlow at Addleshaw Goddard provided legal advice to Barclays Corporate with Ralph Picken of Trowers & Hamlins advising Waterloo Housing Group.
The deal is the first to be announced since Barclays’ completion of its move to Snow Hill following the announcement last year that Barclays had acquired over 98,000 sq ft of new office space from Ballymore, the international property development company, the then owners.
The move has brought together 1,000 sales and operations colleagues from Barclays Corporate Midlands division, previously located across the Greater Birmingham area.
A 15-year lease has been agreed on the office space, which forms part of the one million sq ft mixed-use scheme.
Barclays, advised by Jones Lang LaSalle, jointly occupy One Snowhill with KPMG.
Ray O’Donoghue, managing director of Barclays in the Midlands region, said: "Our move to Snow Hill is one of the biggest investments we have made in property in the UK and reaffirms our commitment to the City.
"It provides us with 40 per cent more office space than we had over multiple sites and offers an excellent environment for both our colleagues and customers in the Midlands.
"The move has enabled us to bring together our existing banking operations under one roof while remaining close to the traditional heart of Birmingham’s business community."
Barclays occupies four floors from levels three to six of One Snow Hill, the first phase of the state-of-the-art, mixed use development next to Snow Hill Station.
Steve Allen, director of operations for the commercial bank, said: "Bringing our operations and servicing teams into one high quality building provides an exceptional working environment for our colleagues and will offer tremendous opportunities to further enhance our delivery capability for our customers."
