Work starts on £13.1 million affordable home development in Birmingham

We’re working with WB Property Group to build homes at the site on Hagley Road in Edgbaston.

The brownfield site has been vacant for a number of years and is now being brought back into use to provide high quality, sustainable housing.

The development will include a range of environmental features including living roofs which will be built across the flats and solar panels will be installed on the townhouses. Biodiversity will also be encouraged at the development through tree planting and there will be pedestrian routes throughout.

Our Land Manager, Amelia McCann, said it’s great to get the project underway.

She said: “We’re thrilled that work has started on this site in Birmingham. It has been a disused site for a number of years and it’s great to see us taking that step forward in building homes on the site.

“We’re really excited to see features in this development which support the environment. At Citizen we want to provide homes for life and we’re also committed to providing homes that are warm, safe and well maintained.

The homes on the site will be made up of, 37 flats for rent to buy, and 10 houses which are also rent to buy. Five of the flats will be for social rent after receiving backing from the Social Housing Accelerator Fund – a £40m initiative launched by Richard Parker, Mayor of the West Midlands, last autumn.

The Fund sets out to help tackle the region’s housing crisis by cutting red tape to directly convert 1,000 properties that are ready for occupation, under construction, or soon-to-be-built into social rent homes—the most affordable type of housing.

The Mayor said: “My priority since taking office has been to turbocharge the construction of more social rent housing because too many people are waiting too long for a safe, secure place to call home.

“The Accelerator Fund has already provided hundreds more social homes including these flats from Citizen.

“That matters because it is changing real people’s lives for the better, especially for those who have been stuck, sometimes for years, in temporary accommodation or poor-quality private rentals.”

Steve Wilkes, Construction Director at WB Property Group, added: “This is a really exciting project for us so it’s great to be on site getting stuck in. The development sets a new standard for affordable housing - the architecture, the sustainability, the placemaking, it’s all exceptional.

“We look forward to bringing this ambitious and socially impactful scheme to life, and ultimately creating much-needed high-quality, affordable homes for families in the region.”

The development is due to be completed in Spring 2028.