Calderdale Regeneration & Investment Briefing

Funding, places and delivery. A briefing for the organisations bringing forward homes and regeneration across Halifax, Brighouse, Elland and the Calderdale valley.

Dates and decisions to watch

Figures in this briefing cover different programmes, geographies and periods. They should not be added into a single borough investment total.

The funding landscape

Up to £46 billion over ten years

Homes England and its subsidiary, the National Housing Bank, have up to £46 billion to deploy across England to 2036. These are the principal streams. [1]

The joint Investment Prospectus, published on 31 March 2026 ahead of the Bank's opening on 1 April, brings grant, land and finance into one framework. The Bank aims to attract more than £50 billion of additional private capital over the decade.

*The prospectus describes the agency's share as £3.1bn, subject to final confirmation. These are programme envelopes, not a ring-fenced allocation to Calderdale.

Programme milestones

Grant, land and finance (products and routes)

Which support fits a scheme depends less on its size than on what is holding it up: a funding gap, a difficult site, or the tenure of the homes to be delivered. [1]

Two grant routes in West Yorkshire. Land, remediation and infrastructure money is increasingly expected to flow through WYCA's integrated settlement — the Brownfield Housing Fund and the West Yorkshire Housing Investment Fund — rather than national competitions. Social and Affordable Homes Programme grant remains administered by Homes England. The National Housing Bank makes its own finance decisions while working alongside the agency. [1]

Regional routes: West Yorkshire

Regional routes: see regions/west-yorkshire.md for the Combined Authority's integrated settlement, the Brownfield Housing Fund and West Yorkshire Housing Investment Fund, the Mass Transit Spatial Development Framework, the Leeds Mayoral Development Zone, the SAHP first-wave regional context and the regional skills offer.

For a Calderdale scheme, the first conversation depends on the funding gap. A regional headline figure is not a borough award.

Calderdale sits inside the five-council West Yorkshire Combined Authority. Unlike Leeds, it has no proposed Mayoral Development Zone; the regional page's only such zone at 19 September 2026 covers Leeds city centre and Leeds South Bank. The Mass Transit Spatial Development Framework's Regulation 19 consultation, covering how homes and workspace sit around the mass transit network, closes 23:59 on 27 September 2026; Calderdale is one of the five constituent planning authorities preparing it jointly with WYCA. [42]

Who decides what (decisions and public contacts)

1. Homes England / National Housing Bank — Final SAHP funding and contractual decisions; the Bank assesses its finance investments. [1,18]
2. West Yorkshire Combined Authority — Regional priorities, the Brownfield Housing Fund and West Yorkshire Housing Investment Fund, the integrated settlement, the Mass Transit Spatial Development Framework. [42]
3. Calderdale Council — Local housing need, planning authority, council land, its Local Plan (adopted 22 March 2023) and the garden communities programme; accountable body for Pride in Place. [6,7]
4. Mixenden and Illingworth Pride in Place Neighbourhood Board — Chaired by Reverend Robb Sutherland (appointed 19 March 2026); sets and signs off the ten-year vision and Investment Plan; council accountability and national programme rules still apply. [31]
5. Development and delivery partners — Housebuilders and Registered Providers on named sites (for example Keepmoat Homes at North Halifax, Bellway Homes at Thornhills, Yorkshire Housing at Cromwell Gardens, Together Housing at Beech Hill and Rawson Wood). [27,10,14,17]

Public routes for the next conversation

A useful first enquiry names the site, landowner, proposed use, delivery lead, funding gap and next decision.

Accessing programme grant: a route for smaller providers

• Continuous Market Engagement — Open for individual schemes and portfolios while funding remains available. Designed to accommodate smaller partners, new entrants and complex projects. [19]
• Strategic partnerships — Programme-level allocations. The initial bidding round closed on 15 April 2026; future rounds will be announced. [18]

Before a grant application

Organisations need Homes England Investment Partner qualification to receive grant. Homes England's published strategic priorities for established mayoral strategic authority areas — which cover West Yorkshire — seek town-centre and neighbourhood regeneration, council-led delivery, community-led housing, low-carbon homes and alignment with the West Yorkshire Fair Work Charter. [21]

Calderdale's own affordable housing position: the adopted Local Plan's housing requirement rose from 840 to 950 homes a year for 2023–2028, reported to increase further to 1,810 a year from 2028 to the plan's end in 2033 — a step-change that reflects the standard method rather than a steady annual figure; confirm against the adopted plan's own trajectory table before relying on the later figure. [8,39]

Places and programmes (borough programmes)

Woodhouse and Thornhills Garden Communities — up to c.3,000 homes, Local Plan allocation

The Calderdale Local Plan, adopted 22 March 2023, allocates two new garden communities: Woodhouse in Rastrick and Thornhills in Brighouse. Together they have published capacity for around 3,000 new homes, two primary schools and a range of community facilities; each is also a named beneficiary of WYCA's West Yorkshire Housing Investment Fund, approved 25 June 2026, as a site capacity rather than a funding award. [7,8,3 in regions/west-yorkshire.md] A masterplan and design code have been consulted on for Woodhouse; contact spatial.planning@calderdale.gov.uk for the current documents. [40]

Thornhills Phase 1a — up to 260 homes, planning application pending

Bellway Homes and the Bretton family's Thornhill Estates Ltd first submitted a c.308-home first phase west of Highmoor Lane, Clifton, in spring 2024; a 2026 revised application reduces this to 260 dwellings (232 market, 76 affordable — around 29%, not the 25% originally reported). Statutory consultees including Sport England have objected; the application had not been decided by Calderdale's planning committee at 19 September 2026. The wider Thornhills garden suburb has been reported at around 1,998 homes in total — a press figure for one garden community, not to be summed with the 3,000-home combined total above. [9,10]

Cromwell Gardens, Rastrick — 267 homes, phase 2 under way

A c.£40m partnership between Yorkshire Housing, Calderdale Council and Equans delivering 267 homes in three phases (mixed affordable rent, shared ownership, rent-to-buy and market sale): phase 1 complete (65 of 267 reported), phase 2 under way (127 homes), phase 3 planned (99 homes), with overall completion reported for winter 2026. [14]

North Halifax Transformation Programme — c.241 homes, Illingworth/Mixenden area

Calderdale Council's regeneration programme with Keepmoat Homes across three council-owned sites — Furness Avenue, Turner Avenue South and Clough Lane — for around 241 new homes plus an extra care facility and public open space, about 20% affordable. The council's own page (updated 25 June 2026) gives a target of "Spring 2029, but this is subject to a number of approvals." A launch event on the Furness Avenue/Turner Avenue South phase (192 homes, 44 through a Registered Provider) was reported 21 August 2026, funded by £35m from Keepmoat plus a £5.3m Homes England Brownfield, Infrastructure and Land grant and £1.1m of developer contributions to schools, transport and environmental improvements; these sites sit in Illingworth, immediately adjacent to the Pride in Place neighbourhood. [27,28]

Completed context

Beech Hill, Halifax: 106 affordable homes with Together Housing, substantially complete by December 2024. [26,17] Bolt Works (former Cow Green multi-storey car park), Halifax town centre: 122 build-to-rent apartments by Placefirst, completed. [23,24] Rawson Wood, Sowerby Bridge: 30 affordable-rent homes with Together Housing and Termrim Construction on the former extra care site; reported contract period 16 June 2025 to 23 November 2026 — treat the completion date as not yet reached rather than delivered. [16,41]

Pride in Place: Mixenden and Illingworth Neighbourhood Board

Phase confirmed against the primary lists. Mixenden — with neighbouring parts of Illingworth, north Halifax — is named in MHCLG's phase 2 methodology note (September 2025, updated 9 March 2026) as Calderdale's one Pride in Place neighbourhood. It does not appear in either the phase 1 list (2023, 75 towns) or the phase 2 expansion list published 20 March 2026 (40 further neighbourhoods plus Wales). This makes Calderdale's place a phase 2 board: the national 30 November 2026 deadline for the ten-year vision and four-year Investment Plan applies; the phase 1 "no plan deadline" and the phase 2 expansion's 26 February 2027 deadline do not. [35,36,37]

Bring a project that can be delivered

• Need, ownership and consent — Who benefits, land control, delivery lead, consents and dependencies.
• Capital and continuing costs — Works, contingency, asset owner, operating budget and maintenance.

National delivery guidance requires phase 2 boards to have at least eight members, with at least 51% living or working locally, membership broadly reflecting the range and diversity of people in the area, and at least one ward councillor. [29,30]

No open Pride in Place project call for Mixenden and Illingworth was found at 19 September 2026. This is consistent with the council's own published profile rather than a gap in the research: years 1–2 are for engagement, governance and capacity-building, with investment rising in years 3–5. The board was seated from June 2026 and its immediate task is the ten-year vision and four-year Investment Plan due 30 November 2026, not a project call. Treat any call date as not verified until published on the council's own Pride in Place page. [44,46,47]

Pride in Place Impact Fund — no Calderdale allocation found

Checked directly against Annex A of both GOV.UK determinations rather than inferred from secondary reporting. Each Annex A lists 94 local authorities, 93 at £750,000 and one at £1,500,000 (£71.25m in total each year); Calderdale is on neither the 2025/26 determination (signed 29 September 2025) nor the 2026/27 determination (signed 8 April 2026). Checking the other four West Yorkshire councils in the same two tables: Bradford and Wakefield appear on both lists at £750,000 a year; Kirklees and Leeds do not appear on either, matching Calderdale. The absence is therefore shared by three of the five West Yorkshire councils, not a Calderdale-specific anomaly. No Impact Fund allocation or target area for Calderdale has been identified. [12,13]

Local investment and project calls: different pots, different decisions

Do not add these figures together. They are different programmes, geographies and periods, and several fund activity around different town centres in the same borough.

Homes, partners and local need

Calderdale's Local Plan, adopted 22 March 2023, sets an initial housing requirement of 950 homes a year for 2023–2028, rising in later Cabinet and Local Plan reporting to a higher figure — reported as 1,810 a year from 2028 to 2033 — reflecting the Inspector's requirement to move from the plan's original 840-a-year figure. Confirm the adopted plan's own phased trajectory table before quoting either figure as the current annual target. [8,39]

Calderdale's Housing Delivery Test score, covering the 2023 monitoring year and published in the round the council's April 2024 Action Plan responds to, was 77%. The council's Action Plan sets up an internal officer group across housing, planning and policy to identify site-specific blockers earlier and work with developers on planning conditions to speed up starts. Whether a later HDT measurement has changed this position, and any current housing register total or homelessness presentation figures, were not found in the sources checked for this brief — open. [34]

The Calderdale Housing Strategy in force is dated 2021–2026; a successor strategy and its targets were not identified in the sources checked — open.

Named local delivery

These are examples of local activity, not a complete provider list or evidence of a new SAHP award. Two of the 33 first-wave SAHP strategic partners are named above, and both are central to Calderdale delivery: Yorkshire Housing Limited (£230.0m of grant and 2,010 homes in the first wave), the lead partner at Cromwell Gardens, Rastrick; and Together Housing Association Limited (£326.6m and 3,200 homes, the largest homes number of any first-wave partner, and Halifax-headquartered), the partner at Beech Hill and Rawson Wood. For an organisation looking for a route into affordable delivery in Calderdale, these are the two most consequential names on the page.

Two cautions. First, the first-wave partner table is a national allocation with no site, scheme or borough breakdown, so a partner's presence in Calderdale is not evidence that any Calderdale scheme is funded from its first-wave grant — the schemes listed above predate the 2026–2036 programme. Second, the grant and homes figures belong to each partner's whole English programme and must never be read as, or added into, a Calderdale total. [2,14,16,26]

Delivery and the supply chain

Finding the actual route to work

Calderdale Council's own tendering page confirms YORtender as its e-tender system ("Our e-tender system where we advertise procurements. You must register first."), consistent with the regional page's description of YORtender as the shared Yorkshire and Humber platform used by all five West Yorkshire councils. Above-threshold notices also appear on Find a Tender; below-threshold notices on Contracts Finder. A contracts register is published on the Calderdale Data Works open-data platform. Procurement enquiries: procurement@calderdale.gov.uk. [22]

Social value. The council's Contract Procedure Rules (Procurement Act 2023 version) define social value as delivering economic, social and/or environmental benefits through procurement activity, alongside the separate Calderdale Living Wage Policy for qualifying contracts. A dedicated Social Value Charter has been developed with partners; the current sliding-scale weighting (equivalent to Dudley's published 20% of award criteria) was not found for Calderdale in the sources checked — open. [43]

A funding announcement does not itself create an open invitation to tender. At North Halifax, Keepmoat is the named development partner already engaged; supply-chain work on that scheme flows through Keepmoat's own procurement, not a council tender.

Skills and delivery capacity

Calderdale College delivers construction courses from its campuses, including bricklaying, joinery, painting and decorating, plumbing and a general Construction Multi Trade introduction, backed by a new £1m Brickwork Centre; the Trade Academy route offers a guaranteed work placement with a local employer. [38]

The regional Construction Technical Excellence College for Yorkshire and the Humber is Leeds College of Building, one of ten named across England from the 2025/26 academic year, backed by £100m nationally (£80m capital, £20m revenue) with a target of 40,000 trained by 2029. Calderdale College's role as a CTEC partner college was not confirmed in the sources checked for this brief — the regional page names Bradford, Kirklees, Calderdale and Wakefield colleges as the "natural sub-regional partners" without a published partner list. [see regions/west-yorkshire.md, source 68]

Sources

Research checked on 19 September 2026.

1. Homes England / National Housing Bank, Investment Prospectus 2026 · source
2. Homes England / MHCLG, "Homes England and government confirm strategic partners...", 25 August 2026 · source
3. WYCA, "Multimillion-pound investment to support thousands of new homes", 25 June 2026 · source
4. Calderdale Council, Local Plan Adoption · source
5. Calderdale Council News, "Help shape the delivery of garden communities" · source
6. Yorkshire Post, "Calderdale local plan: Plans to build major new housing development in Yorkshire with 3,000 new homes" · source
7. Halifax Courier, "Thousands of homes are planned for Brighouse and east Calderdale" · source
8. Thornhells.org.uk (community group tracking the application), "Planning application – Phase 1a" · source
9. Halifax Courier, "Calderdale planning applications: Green light for over 80 new homes at Rastrick" · source
10. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations 2025–26 · source
11. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations 2026–27 · source
12. Yorkshire Housing, "First phase of 267-home Rastrick development complete" · source
13. Local Government Association, "Beech Hill regeneration: Calderdale Council" · source
14. Efficiency North, "Work begins on former brownfield site in Sowerby Bridge" (Rawson Wood) · source
15. Together Housing Group, "Beech Hill, Halifax" · source
16. Homes England, SAHP 2026 to 2036 guidance · source
17. Homes England, SAHP Continuous Market Engagement route · source
18. Homes England, SAHP Strategic Partnership route · source
19. Homes England, SAHP 2026–2036: strategic priorities in established mayoral strategic authority areas · source
20. Calderdale Council, Tendering, Contracts and Procurement · source
21. Calderdale Council News, "Placefirst completes £21m build-to-rent scheme in central Halifax" · source
22. Halifax Courier, "What happened to Cow Green car park? Former Halifax town centre car park turned into 122 rental apartments" · source
23. Calderdale Council News, "Work starts on £15.5m affordable housing scheme in Halifax" (Beech Hill) · source
24. Premier Construction News, "New £35 million regeneration scheme launches in North Halifax", 21 August 2026 · source
25. Calderdale Council, North Halifax Transformation Programme · source
26. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme delivery guidance · source
27. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme prospectus · source
28. Calderdale Council News, "New Chair appointed to lead Pride in Place programme" · source
29. calderdale.thelead.uk, "Halifax MP hosts community session to see how £20m grant should be spent" · source
30. Calderdale Council, Housing Delivery Test Action Plan, dated April 2024 · source
31. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 1: place selection methodology note · source
32. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2: methodology note · source
33. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2 expansion: place selection methodology note, published 20 March 2026 · source
34. Calderdale College, Construction · source
35. Calderdale Council News, "New homes for the Local Plan" · source
36. Calderdale Council, Woodhouse Garden Community draft masterplan · source
37. Constructionmap.info, Rawsons Wood construction site record (secondary; contract dates not verified against a council or Together Housing report) · source
38. WYCA Your Voice, West Yorkshire Mass Transit: Spatial Development Framework joint DPD, Regulation 19 publication draft consultation · source
39. Calderdale Council, Contract Procedure Rules, Procurement Act 2023 version, February 2025 · source
40. Calderdale Council, Pride in Place · source
41. Calderdale Council News, "Brighouse and Todmorden to benefit from Towns Fund" · source
42. Calderdale Council, Pride in Place (page updated 25 June 2026: £20m over ten years, revenue/capital mix, years 1–2 / 3–5 / later-years funding profile, Neighbourhood Board role) · source
43. Calderdale Council News, "Volunteer as a board member to shape the future of Mixenden and parts of Illingworth", 29 April 2026 (revised recruitment timetable: expressions of interest close 24 May 2026; appointments late May 2026; first board meeting June 2026) · source

Research notes

Verified from primary or council sources

• Calderdale's absence from Pride in Place Impact Fund Annex A was checked directly against the raw table data in both GOV.UK determinations (fetched via ScrapingBee and parsed programmatically, not summarised by a fetch tool), confirming 94 local authorities in each year and Calderdale on neither; Bradford and Wakefield appear on both, Kirklees and Leeds on neither, matching Calderdale. [12,13]
• Calderdale's Pride in Place neighbourhood (Mixenden and neighbouring parts of Illingworth) was checked against all three GOV.UK phase lists: present in the phase 2 methodology note only, absent from phase 1 and the 20 March 2026 phase 2 expansion note. This fixes the applicable plan deadline as 30 November 2026, not 26 February 2027. [35,36,37]
• The Local Plan adoption date (22 March 2023), the Woodhouse and Thornhills garden communities and their combined c.3,000-home capacity, and the council's own tendering page confirming YORtender were each read from Calderdale Council's own pages. [6,7,22]
• The North Halifax Transformation Programme's c.241-home total and Spring 2029 target came from the council's own project page (updated 25 June 2026); the £35m Keepmoat investment, £5.3m Homes England BIL grant and the 192-home Furness Avenue/Turner Avenue South phase came from a trade-press launch report dated 21 August 2026 and are consistent with, not contradicting, the council figure. [27,28]
• Cromwell Gardens, Rastrick (267 homes, Yorkshire Housing/Equans/Calderdale Council partnership) came from Yorkshire Housing's own news page. [14]

Verification 19 Sep 2026

• SAHP partner claim corrected — the single biggest error found in this brief. The line "none of the 33 first-wave SAHP strategic partners is confirmed as active on a named Calderdale scheme" was wrong. Two are named in this brief's own delivery table: Yorkshire Housing Limited (£230.0m / 2,010 homes), lead partner at Cromwell Gardens; and Together Housing Association Limited (£326.6m / 3,200 homes, the largest homes number of any first-wave partner, headquartered in Halifax), the partner at Beech Hill and Rawson Wood. Read against the 25 August 2026 partner table directly. The text now names both, with the two necessary cautions: the table is a national envelope with no site or borough breakdown, and those schemes predate the 2026–2036 programme. [2]
• SAHP first-wave wording corrected in the programme-milestones table: the release states no grant or homes total; the table sums to £9,584.1m and 73,617 homes, partners capped at £350m.
• Pride in Place board status closed. The earlier text said the board was "still being assembled" with applications open to 7 June 2026. Calderdale's own news release of 29 April 2026 supersedes that: the deadline was brought forward "due to the national programme timeline" to 24 May 2026, with appointments confirmed late May and the first board meeting in June 2026. The board should be seated. Board membership is still not published — that remains not verified. [47]
• Pride in Place funding profile added from the council's own page (updated 25 June 2026): £20m as a mix of revenue and capital, with a published three-stage shape — years 1–2 engagement, governance and capacity; years 3–5 rising investment; later years larger-scale change. This reframes the absence of an open project call as expected rather than as a research gap. [46]
• £20m confirmed as per place, from the national prospectus ("up to £20 million funding and support for each place over a 10-year period") and delivery guidance, not per council and never to be summed. [29,30]
• Board composition rules completed from the delivery guidance: at least eight members, at least 51% living or working locally, membership broadly reflecting the diversity of the area, and at least one ward councillor. [29,30]
• Impact Fund re-checked: both determinations' Annex A tables parsed programmatically, 94 authorities each year; Calderdale absent from both, Bradford and Wakefield present at £750,000, Kirklees and Leeds absent. The cross-borough comparison in the brief is confirmed. [12,13]
• Procurement re-checked: Calderdale's own tendering page (new.calderdale.gov.uk/business-services/tendering-contracts-and-procurement, updated 25 June 2026) confirms YORtender as the e-tendering system for all quotation and tender opportunities, with procurement@calderdale.gov.uk for general queries and query-specific contact via YORtender itself. The regional page's "all five councils use YORtender" claim has been corrected there — Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield do; Leeds uses Jaggaer and Bradford is moving to Atamis.
• Still open after search: the successor to the 2021–2026 Calderdale Housing Strategy. Searched calderdale.gov.uk, new.calderdale.gov.uk and the council's moderngov committee documents. The 2021–2026 strategy and its cabinet decision are retrievable, and a Place Scrutiny Board "Detailed Review into Housing within Calderdale" exists, but no adopted successor strategy or post-2026 annual homebuilding target was found. The Local Plan's near-1,000-homes-a-year requirement remains the operative target.

Not verified / press only

• The Thornhills garden suburb's reported "around 1,998 homes" total (secondary press), the Thornhills Phase 1a reduction to 260 homes and its 29% affordable proportion (a campaign group's tracking page, not the council's own decision notice), and the Gleeson/Toothill Bank scheme's exact affordable tenure split are press- or campaign-sourced. [9,10,11]
• Calderdale's Housing Delivery Test score of 77% and its April 2024 Action Plan were read from the plan itself, but a later HDT measurement (2024 or 2025) was not checked against Calderdale specifically — the national 2024 and 2025 measurement publications exist but were not opened for this brief.
• The current Calderdale Living Wage / Social Value weighting equivalent to Dudley's published 20%-of-award-criteria figure was not found for Calderdale.
• Calderdale's 2026/27 UK Shared Prosperity Fund successor allocation was not found; understood to sit inside WYCA's integrated settlement by analogy with other West Yorkshire boroughs, not confirmed against a Calderdale-specific document.
• Calderdale College's status as a Leeds College of Building CTEC partner college was not confirmed; the regional page names it only as a "natural sub-regional partner."

Open items

• ~~Whether the Mixenden and Illingworth Pride in Place board is now fully constituted~~ — largely resolved: recruitment closed 24 May 2026, appointments late May, first meeting June 2026 [47]. Still open: the published membership list, and any project call (none expected before years 3–5 per the council's own funding profile [46]).
• Calderdale's current housing register total, band breakdown and homelessness presentation figures.
• The successor to the 2021–2026 Calderdale Housing Strategy and any new annual homebuilding target — re-searched 19 September 2026 across the council's site and its committee documents; no adopted successor found (see Verification note).
• The sixth-largest live scheme candidates beyond the four identified were not exhaustively searched; Rawson Wood (30 homes) and other schemes under 100 homes were treated as smaller context rather than ranked among the four largest.
• Current spend status of the 2021 Towns Fund awards to Brighouse and Todmorden.

Blocked or failed URLs

• None encountered direct 403/blocked responses in this edition; all GOV.UK and council pages fetched successfully (HTTP 200) via WebFetch or the ScrapingBee fallback. The WYCA committee paper on "Halifax Living" (Item 6 Appendix 4) is a pre-2020 Local Growth Fund document, retrieved successfully but not cited as it predates the current programme and its figures (based on an 840-homes-a-year draft plan) are superseded.

General information only, not legal, financial or professional advice. Confirm eligibility and terms with the relevant body.