Dudley Regeneration & Investment Briefing

Funding, places and delivery. A briefing for the organisations bringing forward homes and regeneration across Dudley, Brierley Hill, Halesowen and Stourbridge.

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 Dudley.

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 the West Midlands. Land, remediation and infrastructure money is increasingly expected to flow through WMCA's integrated settlement rather than national competitions. Social and Affordable Homes Programme grant remains administered by Homes England, with WMCA's mayoral strategic priorities shaping rather than administering it. The National Housing Bank makes its own finance decisions while working alongside the agency. [1,50]

Regional routes: West Midlands

Regional routes: see regions/west-midlands.md for the Combined Authority's devolved housing and land funds, the integrated settlement, the West Midlands Spatial Development Strategy, the Birmingham East Mayoral Development Corporation, the SAHP first-wave partner table and its regional estimate (MHCLG's published £409m / c.3,200 homes), and the regional skills offer.

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

Dudley sits inside the seven-borough West Midlands Combined Authority. It is not named as one of WMCA's specific growth corridors, Mayoral Development Corporation or Investment Zone sites on the regional page; the Black Country Growth Corridor referenced in Homes England's mayoral strategic priorities is described at West Midlands level, without a published Dudley boundary. [10,21]

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 Midlands Combined Authority — Regional priorities, tenure mix and mayoral strategic priorities for SAHP; devolved housing and land funds; Single Commissioning Framework; the integrated settlement. [3,21,50]
3. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council — Local housing need, planning authority, council land and its own new-build programme; accountable body for Pride in Place and for the Dudley Local Plan 2041. [6,7]
4. Dudley Neighbourhood Board — Chaired by Neil Thomas, with Paul Crofts (chief executive, Dudley Canal and Caverns) as vice chair; sets and signs off the Pride in Place regeneration and investment plans and the Community Grants Fund; council accountability and national programme rules still apply. [7,8]
5. Development and delivery partners — Housebuilders and contractors on named sites (for example Morro Partnerships at Swan Street, Jessup Partnership on recent council schemes); Registered Providers such as Black Country Housing Group. [14,15,34]

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. WMCA's published mayoral strategic priorities seek approximately 60% Social Rent through SAHP bids across the seven boroughs, alongside Stepping Stone supportive accommodation, wheelchair-accessible M4(3) homes and estate regeneration. [21]

Dudley's own planning-led affordable housing position comes from the Black Country Strategic Housing Market Assessment (2021), which the emerging Local Plan cites as requiring 32.7% of new housing to be affordable to meet identified need; this is a needs-based figure, not a confirmed adopted policy percentage, and should be checked against the adopted Local Plan's own affordable housing policy before use. [16]

WMCA's devolved housing and land funds set a minimum 20% affordable housing threshold for schemes seeking that investment, alongside a demonstrable market failure and a track record of delivery. [3]

Places and programmes (borough programmes)

The Local Plan's priority brownfield sites — up to 1,900 of the 11,954 homes needed to 2041

The Dudley Local Plan 2041, adopted 13 July 2026, names six brownfield sites as "priority" sites expected to deliver nearly 2,000 of the 11,954 homes the government's standard method says the borough needs by 2041. The council's own figures for five of the six are: [6,10]

A sixth priority site is named in council reporting but not identified by name in the sources retrieved for this brief — not verified. These are Local Plan allocations, not consented or under-construction schemes; none of the five above has a confirmed planning decision in the sources checked. Do not add them to the 11,954 borough total, which already contains them. [6,10]

Portersfield — a much older, larger figure not reconciled with the Local Plan number

A 2021 press report describes an £82m Portersfield scheme with retail, leisure and "over 350" apartments; Dudley's own Portersfield consultation page describes a mixed-use scheme including housing without a homes number. The Local Plan's 280-homes figure for Portersfield is the more recent, primary-sourced figure and is used above; the 350-plus figure is not verified against a current planning application and should not be summed with it. [10,11]

Swan Street, Netherton — 75 homes, under construction

Dudley Council's own scheme on the former Arley and Compton Courts site: 75 affordable-rent homes (54 sheltered apartments plus 21 two-, three- and four-bedroom houses), with £4m from Homes England. Planning permission was granted in August 2022. A construction-industry monitoring site not independently confirmed by the council records a contract period of 11 March 2024 to 11 March 2026 with Morro Partnerships as principal contractor and the council as client — not verified against a council report, but consistent with the council's own description of the scheme as under way. [14,15]

Beacon Rise, Sedgley, and Lower Valley Road, Brierley Hill — 28 council homes, delivered

Two smaller council-led schemes, both funded with Homes England grant (over £600,000 for Beacon Rise's 11 homes, over £900,000 for Lower Valley Road's 17 homes) and built by Jessup Partnership, completed end 2023 / early 2024: 8 apartments and 3 houses at Beacon Rise; 14 apartments and 3 wheelchair-accessible bungalows at Lower Valley Road. Treat as delivered, not pipeline. [23]

Dudley town centre metro and interchange corridor

WMCA-funded infrastructure around the town centre includes the Wednesbury to Brierley Hill Metro extension (WMCA has committed £449m to the wider scheme) and an £18m bus and tram interchange; both are transport infrastructure rather than housing, but they sit alongside the Portersfield and St Joseph's Street sites and are the context for the council's business case for further transport improvements through the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement. These figures are transport-programme totals, not part of the housing figures above. [24,25]

Pride in Place: the Dudley Neighbourhood Board

Dudley has one Pride in Place area, covering the whole borough corridor "from Priory to Dudley Wood", including Netherton and Dudley town centres, rather than the two-neighbourhood pattern seen in some other boroughs. Its funding traces back to the 2023 Long Term Plan for Towns programme, carried through the 2025 rebrand to Plan for Neighbourhoods and now sitting inside the national Pride in Place programme — one of 75 English places in that earlier cohort. [7,8]

Phase confirmed against the primary lists. MHCLG's phase 1 place-selection methodology note names "West Midlands | Dudley | Dudley (Dudley)" among the 75 phase 1 towns — so Dudley's area is formally a phase 1 place, not an inference from its Long Term Plan for Towns lineage. It appears on neither the phase 2 methodology note nor the phase 2 expansion note published 20 March 2026, so Dudley is one of only two WMCA boroughs (with Solihull) holding a single Pride in Place place, and the only one whose single place is phase 1. The practical consequence: the 30 November 2026 and 26 February 2027 plan deadlines that bind neighbouring boroughs do not apply to Dudley, whose plans were submitted in 2025 and approved in May 2026. [35,36,37]

Dudley Community Grants Fund — round one closed, delivery under way

The board's first Community Grants Fund round opened its application portal on 5 June 2026 and closed on 3 July 2026 at 5pm. Thirty-three community organisations were awarded a share of more than £420,000 — above the amount originally set aside, because of application quality — with individual grants of up to £20,000, project delivery from September 2026, and a further round planned for early 2027. [9]

Pride in Place Impact Fund — no Dudley allocation found

Unlike Rochdale, Knowsley and several other boroughs, Dudley does not appear in Annex A of either the 2025/26 determination (signed 29 September 2025) or the 2026/27 determination (signed 8 April 2026) for the Pride in Place Impact Fund, read directly from the two GOV.UK determinations. Each Annex A lists 94 local authorities — 93 at £750,000 and one at £1,500,000, £71.25m in each year. Five of the seven WMCA boroughs are on both lists at £750,000 a year (Birmingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Walsall, Wolverhampton); Dudley and Solihull are on neither. No Impact Fund allocation or target area for Dudley has been identified. [12,13]

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 for Pride in Place areas requires boards to have at least eight members, with at least 51% living or working locally. [29,30]

Local investment and project calls: different pots, different decisions

Do not add these figures together. They are different programmes, geographies and periods, and several of them fund activity around the same town centre sites.

Homes, partners and local need

The Local Plan number and the new national number

The Dudley Local Plan 2041, adopted 13 July 2026 after examination, sets its own housing requirement at 11,954 homes over the plan period, protects the borough's green belt, and concludes that exceptional circumstances do not exist to justify releasing green belt land for housing. The council's own priority-sites reporting frames "nearly 2,000" of that 11,954 as coming from the six brownfield sites listed above. [6,10]

Separately, the government's current standard method sets Dudley's annual housing need at 1,514 homes a year — a figure councillors and officers have publicly described as rendering the adopted plan's own numbers out of date almost immediately, and well above the borough's historical delivery rate. Cllr Ryan Priest (Liberal Democrat leader) called the plan's position "a crying shame" because "of the change of housing target it can only be temporary"; Cllr Ed Lawrence said the council would "have to start a new local plan based on the new government's ... housing figures for Dudley." These figures are not directly comparable: 11,954 is the adopted plan's cumulative total to 2041, and 1,514 is a current annual standard-method figure calculated under later national guidance. Do not divide one into the other to imply a shortfall number. [27,28]

Affordable housing need

The Black Country Strategic Housing Market Assessment (2021), cited in Dudley's Local Plan evidence base, puts the affordable housing requirement at 32.7% of new housing borough-wide. This is a needs-based figure from the evidence base, not necessarily the plan's adopted site-by-site affordable housing percentage — check the adopted policy wording for individual allocations before quoting it as a requirement. [16]

Dudley's Housing Delivery Test score, published December 2024 and covering the 2023 monitoring year, was 63%; the council was required to publish an Action Plan on how it will support the delivery of more homes by June 2025. Whether that Action Plan has been published, and its contents, is not verified in the sources checked for this brief. [16]

The council's housing register uses a five-band prioritisation scheme (Band 1 highest priority to Band 5 lowest), and the council states demand for council housing is far higher than supply, but no current total number of households on the register, or of homelessness presentations, was found in the sources checked — open. [17]

Named local delivery

These are examples of local activity, not a complete provider list or evidence of a new SAHP award. None of the 33 first-wave SAHP strategic partners is confirmed as active on a named Dudley scheme in the sources checked for this brief.

Delivery and the supply chain

Finding the actual route to work

Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council advertises tenders through In-tend, the Black Country Portal (in-tendhost.co.uk/blackcountryportal), confirmed directly from the council's own tendering page rather than assumed from the regional page. Registration is free. A contracts register is published on the same platform (in-tendhost.co.uk/blackcountryportal/aspx/Contracts/Current), and current tender invitations are listed separately on the council's own site. Procurement enquiries: corporate.procurement@dudley.gov.uk. [22]

Above-threshold notices also appear on Find a Tender (find-tender.service.gov.uk), the national register introduced under the Procurement Act 2023 regime; below-threshold notices appear on Contracts Finder and on the Black Country Portal itself. [31]

Social value. Dudley's published policy allows social value to count for up to 20% of the criteria used to award a contract, assessed on a sliding scale by contract type and value, with larger contracts expected to deliver more. The council states it evaluates social, economic and environmental impact against three themes: stronger, safer communities; a greener, cleaner environment; and growing the economy and creating jobs. [32]

A funding announcement does not itself create an open invitation to tender. At Portersfield the development partner (Avenbury (Dudley) Ltd) is already engaged; supply-chain work on that scheme flows through that partner's own procurement, not through a council tender.

Skills and delivery capacity

Dudley College of Technology is the West Midlands' Construction Technical Excellence College — one of ten named in England following a Department for Education bidding process announced 12 August 2025. It delivers from the Construction Apprenticeship Training (CAT) Centre in Brierley Hill and the Advance Centre in Dudley, covering brickwork, plumbing, electrical installation, building services engineering, construction management, retrofit and solar PV installation, backed by £100m of national programme funding (£80m capital, £20m revenue) across all ten colleges. Employer contact: 01384 363 000 · dudleycol.ac.uk/employers/. See regions/west-midlands.md for the full regional detail; Dudley is the CTEC's host borough, so this is the borough's own principal skills asset rather than a route into another borough's provision. [38]

Halesowen College, also in the borough, offers vocational construction courses in plastering, bricklaying, electrical installation and carpentry and joinery; its role as a feeder or delivery partner for the CTEC is not verified. [33]

Social value commitments are the practical hook for apprenticeships and placements on Dudley contracts; agree them with the contract owner at tender stage, not after award. [32]

Sources

Research checked on 19 September 2026.

1. Homes England / National Housing Bank, Investment Prospectus 2026 · source
2. Homes England, "Homes England and government confirm strategic partners...", 25 August 2026 · source
3. WMCA, Investing with us (Single Commissioning Framework, funds, invest@wmca.org.uk) · source
4. Dudley Council, Dudley Local Plan · source
5. Dudley Council News, "£20m investment plan approved" · source ; Express & Star, "'Only the beginning of the journey' - Plans submitted by council...", 23 December 2025 · source
6. Regenerating Dudley (Dudley Council), Pride in Place · source
7. Dudley Council News, "Community projects to receive funding boost through Pride in Place grants" · source
8. Dudley Council News, "No building on borough green belt, blueprint reveals" · source
9. Dudley Council, Portersfield consultation · source ; Birmingham Post via PressReader, "£82m town centre revamp project a step closer", 15 April 2021 (press; not verified against a current application) · 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. Dudley Council News, "£4million secured for housing development" · source
13. Dudley Council News, "Planning permission granted for new development" · source ; Constructionmap.info, Swan Street site record (secondary, contract dates and contractor not verified against a council source) · source
14. Dudley Council, Housing Delivery Test / plans, policies and strategies (draft Housing Strategy 2025–2041 consultation) · source
15. Dudley Council, housing options and community housing team contact pages · source · source · 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. Dudley Council, tendering · source
21. Dudley Council News, "New housing developments are underway" (Beacon Rise, Lower Valley Road) · source
22. WMCA, "Plans to regenerate and transform Dudley town centre given double boost" · source
23. Dudley Council News, St Joseph's Street / Portersfield interchange update · source
24. Dudley Council News, "Leader welcomes investment", 3 October 2023 · source
25. Streamlinefeed, "Dudley Council Adopts Contentious Local Housing Plan Amid Protests" (press; secondary summary) · source
26. Yahoo News UK (Local Democracy Reporting Service), "Dudley local plan formally adopted despite 'crying shame' of new housing targets" · source
27. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme delivery guidance · source
28. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme prospectus · source
29. Find a Tender service · source
30. Dudley Council, Social Value Policy · source
31. Halesowen College, construction courses · source
32. Housing Digital, "Work begins on Black Country Housing's Dudley scheme" · source
33. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 1: place selection methodology note ("West Midlands | Dudley | Dudley (Dudley)") · source
34. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2: methodology note (no Dudley entry) · source
35. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2 expansion: place selection methodology note, published 20 March 2026 (no Dudley entry) · source
36. Dudley College of Technology, "Dudley College of Technology named National Centre of Technical Excellence", 12 August 2025 · source ; WMCA, "West Midlands secures more funding to train the next generation of construction workers" · source
37. WMCA, Integrated Settlement: what the funding means for the West Midlands · source
38. MHCLG, "Historic council housebuilding comeback to help families into secure homes", 24 August 2026 — regional funding breakdown of estimated first-wave SAHP Strategic Partnership spend and homes by established mayoral strategic authority: Greater Manchester £529m / c.4,400 homes; West Midlands £409m / c.3,200 homes; North East £445m / c.3,400 homes; West Yorkshire £441m / c.4,000 homes; Liverpool City Region £380m / c.3,100 homes; South Yorkshire £249m / c.2,200 homes · source

Research notes

Verified from primary or council sources

• Dudley Local Plan 2041 read from the council's own Local Plan page: formally adopted at Full Council on 13 July 2026. [6]
• The Dudley Neighbourhood Board's £20m Pride in Place programme, its boundary ("Priory to Dudley Wood, including Netherton and Dudley town centres"), chair (Neil Thomas) and vice chair (Paul Crofts) read from the council's own Regenerating Dudley page and council news. [7,8]
• Community Grants Fund round one — portal dates, 33 organisations, over £420,000 awarded, delivery from September 2026, next round early 2027 — read from the council's own news article. [9]
• The six priority brownfield sites and their homes numbers (Ketley Quarry 600, Waterfront Way/Level Street 600, Portersfield 280, Daniels Land/The Embankment 300, King Street/Flood Street 120) and the 11,954-home Local Plan total read from the council's own news coverage of the Local Plan. [10]
• Swan Street, Netherton — 75 homes, £4m Homes England grant, planning permission August 2022 — read from the council's own news. [14,15]
• The tender portal was confirmed directly from Dudley's own procurement page as In-tend, the Black Country Portal, not assumed from the regional page. [22]
• The Pride in Place Impact Fund check was done directly against both GOV.UK determinations' Annex A tables (fetched and searched in full): Dudley is absent from both the 2025/26 and 2026/27 lists. [12,13]
• Dudley College of Technology's Construction Technical Excellence College designation, funding and delivery sites are carried from the regional page's own primary-sourced detail; not re-verified independently in this brief. [13 in regions/west-midlands.md]
• Social value policy (up to 20% of award criteria, sliding scale by contract value) read from the council's own Social Value Policy page. [32]

Open items

• The exact year of the draft Housing Strategy 2025–2041 consultation deadline (26 October) could not be confirmed from the council's live consultations page, which did not list it at the time of checking — confirm directly with the council before relying on this date.
• No current housing register total, band breakdown or homelessness presentation figures were found for Dudley.
• No UKSPF successor allocation or open call for Dudley in 2026/27 was found; this money is understood to now sit inside WMCA's integrated settlement, as in other West Midlands boroughs, but that has not been confirmed against a Dudley-specific document.
• Portersfield's homes number is unreconciled: the Local Plan's own figure is 280; a 2021 press report describes "over 350" apartments in an £82m scheme. Neither figure is confirmed against a live, decided planning application.
• Whether Dudley has published the Action Plan required after its December 2024 Housing Delivery Test score of 63% was not confirmed.
• The Swan Street contract dates (11 March 2024 to 11 March 2026) and contractor (Morro Partnerships) come from a construction-industry monitoring site, not a council report, and are marked not verified accordingly.
• The sixth Local Plan priority brownfield site remains unnamed. The council's own news coverage says "six brownfield sites" but itemises only five, whose homes numbers already sum to 1,900 of the "nearly 2,000" claimed. Searched the council news article, the Dudley Local Plan planning-policy pages and the dudley.oc2.uk examination library (Part Two: Centres and Site Allocations, Dudley Town Inset Plan Area Site Allocations); no published list of six named priority sites was found.

Blocked or failed URLs

• https://www.expressandstar.com/news/local-hubs/dudley/2025/12/23/only-the-beginning-of-the-journey-plans-submitted-by-council-for-improvements-to-parts-of-dudley-borough/ — HTTP 403 to direct WebFetch; retrieved via ScrapingBee with JavaScript rendering instead (HTTP 200).

Verification 19 Sep 2026

• Dudley's Pride in Place phase is now confirmed from the primary list, and the "not verified" removed. MHCLG's phase 1 place-selection methodology note names "West Midlands | Dudley | Dudley (Dudley)" among the 75 phase 1 towns. The previous edition inferred phase 1 from the Long Term Plan for Towns lineage and flagged it as unconfirmed. [35]
• Also confirmed as a negative: Dudley appears on neither the phase 2 methodology note nor the phase 2 expansion note published 20 March 2026. Dudley and Solihull are the only two WMCA boroughs with a single Pride in Place place, and Dudley is the only one whose single place is phase 1. Added the practical consequence — the 30 November 2026 and 26 February 2027 plan deadlines binding neighbouring boroughs do not apply here. [36,37]
• Citation error corrected. The Construction Technical Excellence College paragraph cited "[13,14]" — Dudley's [13] is the 2026/27 Impact Fund determination and [14] a council news item about £4m for Swan Street, neither of which supports a CTEC claim. Replaced with a new source 38 (Dudley College's own designation release and WMCA's announcement). This mattered more here than elsewhere because Dudley is the CTEC's host borough.
• Impact Fund negative finding strengthened. Re-read both Annex A tables in full: each lists 94 local authorities, 93 at £750,000 and one at £1,500,000, £71.25m a year. Five WMCA boroughs are on both lists; Dudley and Solihull are on neither. The previous edition asserted Dudley's absence correctly but gave no sense of the list's size, which is what makes the absence meaningful. [12,13]
• SAHP milestone line re-checked against the 25 August 2026 release: the partner table sums to £9,584.1m and 73,617 homes across 33 partners, with no total stated in the release — the brief's wording was already correct and is unchanged. Also re-checked that no first-wave partner has a named Dudley scheme: still the case. [2]
• SAHP first-wave regional estimate added. MHCLG's release of 24 August 2026, "Historic council housebuilding comeback to help families into secure homes," publishes a regional funding breakdown giving the West Midlands an estimated £409m and around 3,200 homes for first-wave Strategic Partnership spend — MHCLG's own regional estimate, not a Dudley award. [51]
• Portersfield 280 vs "over 350" re-searched: no live, decided planning application reconciling the two was found. The Local Plan's 280 remains the primary figure in the brief and the 2021 £82m/"over 350" press report stays marked not verified. Unchanged.
• Procurement re-checked: In-tend, the Black Country Portal, confirmed from the council's own tendering page; social value up to 20% of award criteria. Unchanged.
• Still open after search: the sixth priority brownfield site (see above); the draft Housing Strategy 2025–2041 consultation year; the Housing Delivery Test Action Plan; Dudley's housing register totals; the Swan Street contract dates and contractor; a Dudley-specific UKSPF successor allocation.
• Citation numbers: all [n] resolve; four new entries added (35–38) in the existing gap between 34 and 50, without renumbering, and no collisions.

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