Sandwell Regeneration & Investment Briefing

Funding, places and delivery. A briefing for the organisations bringing forward homes and regeneration across Sandwell's six towns.

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 Sandwell.

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 normally expected to come first through WMCA's integrated settlement and devolved housing and land funds. Social and Affordable Homes Programme grant remains administered by Homes England, with WMCA's mayoral strategic priorities shaping bids in the seven boroughs. The National Housing Bank makes its own finance decisions while working alongside the agency. [1,18,21]

Sandwell's own recent experience shows both routes in use: WMCA's Brownfield Fund clean-up money for Friar Park, and Homes England / Homes England-adjacent Levelling Up Fund site acquisition for Smethwick. [9,13]

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 Spatial Development Strategy, the Birmingham East Mayoral Development Corporation, the SAHP first-wave regional estimate (MHCLG's published £409m / c.3,200 homes) and the regional skills offer.

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

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 priority corridors; devolved housing and land funds; Single Commissioning Framework. [3,21]
3. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council — Local housing need, planning authority, council land; accountable body for both Pride in Place programmes and the Impact Fund. [3,4,27,28]
4. Friar Park Pride in Place Neighbourhood Board (phase 2) — Being constituted; will produce the 10-year Regeneration Plan for Friar Park, Wednesbury. [3]
5. Smethwick Partnership Board (phase 1) — Governs the Smethwick Pride in Place programme; submitted the 10-year Regeneration Plan and 4-year Investment Plan to government in late 2025. [4,5]
6. Development partners under contract — Keepmoat at Friar Park; GreenSquareAccord and Morro Partnerships at Swan Lane. These are existing appointments, not open opportunities. [9,11]

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 mayoral strategic priorities seek approximately 60% Social Rent through SAHP bids in the seven boroughs. [21] The Friar Park Urban Village scheme is designed to at least 25% affordable homes; the earlier, superseded WMCA Brownfield Fund tranche for the same site required a minimum 20% affordable homes under WMCA's own standard — a lower, older figure that should not be quoted as the current requirement. [9,26]

Places and programmes (borough programmes)

Friar Park Urban Village, Wednesbury — around 600 homes, Keepmoat appointed

The largest live housing site in the borough: a roughly 32-football-pitch former waste plant, foundry and hospital site that has sat derelict for over 40 years. Sandwell Council and WMCA appointed Keepmoat, a top-10 national housebuilder, as preferred developer in September 2025 to bring forward around 600 homes, at least 25% of them affordable. [9,10]

Before house building starts, the partners must secure planning permission for a major land decontamination programme; that process is expected to take two to three years, with the full development spanning eight to ten years. [10]

An earlier WMCA Brownfield Fund announcement described the same site as a "750-home community" under a 20%-affordable condition. That figure is five years old, comes from an earlier phase of WMCA funding, and is superseded by the 600-home, 25%-affordable scheme now in delivery with Keepmoat. Do not add the two figures together; treat 600 as the current position. [9,26]

Friar Park is also the borough's Pride in Place phase 2 neighbourhood, discussed below. [3]

Swan Lane, West Bromwich — 147 affordable homes, GreenSquareAccord

A former gas works site delivering 147 new homes for social and affordable rent: 41 two-bed and 24 three-bed houses, plus 17 one-bed and 65 two-bed apartments. Delivery partner is GreenSquareAccord with developer Morro Partnerships, in a scheme involving Sandwell Council and Homes England. The Black Lake Metro stop is less than 100 metres away. GreenSquareAccord's own reporting frames Swan Lane as delivering the RP's 2,000th affordable home through the Matrix Partnership route with Homes England. Completion is phased; exact overall completion date not verified. [11]

West Bromwich town centre masterplan — 1,359 homes envisaged over 20 years

WMCA's Midlands Investment Portfolio describes a 22-hectare masterplan generating 1,359 new homes alongside a new Metro gateway, Town Square, 12,000 sq m of new retail floorspace and 1,740 jobs, with an indicative delivery period of April 2026 to March 2042 and £165m of associated investment. This is a long-term masterplan envelope rather than a single consented scheme, and should be read as an ambition figure, not a committed homes number with a delivery date. [12]

Smethwick — Levelling Up Fund site acquisition, around 151 homes

Sandwell was awarded just over £18m from Round 3 of the Levelling Up Fund. Together with match funding, this is being used to acquire sites in Smethwick and bring forward development-ready land for around 151 new homes and a new primary school. This is assembly and site-preparation funding, not a homes grant; the eventual developer and tenure mix are not verified here. [13]

Pride in Place: three places, three cohorts, three clocks

Sandwell has one place in each of the programme's three national cohorts, and the previous edition of this brief carried only two of them. All three are confirmed against the relevant primary MHCLG place list: Smethwick (phase 1, plan already submitted and approved), Friar Park, Wednesbury (phase 2, plan due 30 November 2026) and Tividale (phase 2 expansion, named 20 March 2026, plan due 26 February 2027). They are at different stages and should not be approached in the same way, and the three £20m awards must never be summed. [3,4,32,33,34]

Sandwell's Cabinet report records that Sandwell is one of 95 places identified nationally for the separate Pride in Place Impact Fund. Reading MHCLG's own Annex A directly, each determination lists 94 local authorities — 93 at £750,000 and one at £1,500,000, totalling £71.25m a year. The council's "95 places" and the determination's "94 authorities" are counting different things (places against accountable bodies) and neither is the 284-place Pride in Place Programme cohort. [3,27,28]

Why Wednesbury needed a new board

Wednesbury already has a Levelling Up Partnership (LUP) board. The council considered using it for Pride in Place and rejected that option: the LUP board's membership does not reflect people with a deep-rooted connection to the smaller Friar Park neighbourhood area, which is defined by a Middle Layer Super Output Area of 5,000–15,000 residents, not the whole of Wednesbury. [3]

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 guidance requires each Neighbourhood Board to have at least eight members, including the local MP and at least one ward councillor, with a majority living or working locally. [29,30]

Pride in Place Impact Fund — £1.5m over two years

• £750,000 in 2025/26 (determination 29 September 2025) and £750,000 in 2026/27 (determination 8 April 2026), read directly from the two GOV.UK determinations. [27,28]
• Sandwell's own Cabinet paper describes this as a separate strand from the Programme, subject to a future Cabinet report on how it will be spent; no target wards or project list is published as at 19 September 2026. Not verified: which neighbourhoods or projects the Impact Fund will support. [3]
• National guidance requires commitment by 31 March 2027. [29]

Local investment and project calls: different pots, different decisions

Do not add these figures together. They are different programmes, geographies and periods, and some of them fund overlapping sites (Friar Park appears under both the Pride in Place Programme and the WMCA Brownfield Fund).

Homes, partners and local need

What the evidence base says

The Housing Needs Assessment 2025, presented to Sandwell's Scrutiny Board, records that the number of households on the housing register has almost doubled since the previous 2022 assessment: [16]

The Housing Strategy 2023–2028 sets a target of 100–150 new council homes a year through 2028, alongside priorities on affordable supply, best use of existing stock, housing quality, health and fuel poverty. [17]

The statutory position

The submitted Sandwell Local Plan, covering the period to 2041, was submitted to the Secretary of State on 11 December 2024. Examination hearings ran in July and September 2025; the Inspector recommended main modifications, consulted on from 16 February to 30 March 2026. Formal adoption is anticipated summer 2026, delayed partly by Planning Inspectorate resourcing. A specific borough-wide annual housing number from this plan was not verified in this edition. [14]

Separately, government has instructed Sandwell — one of around 40 councils — to begin work on a new-style Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026–2044) as part of national planning reform, to be prepared "in no more than three years." No housing target figures for Local Plan 2 are yet published. The two plans should not be confused: Local Plan 2 does not replace the plan awaiting adoption; it starts once the current plan is adopted. [15]

Delivery and the supply chain

Finding the actual route to work

Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council runs its own In-tend instance, distinct from the shared Black Country Portal used by Dudley and the CSW-JETS instance shared by Coventry and Solihull. Suppliers register at in-tendhost.co.uk/sandwellmbc; the In-tend support line for portal problems is 0844 272 8810. [22]

The council publishes a Procurement Contracts Register and Contract Procedure Rules; a specific council-wide procurement threshold figure (equivalent to Birmingham's published £25,000) was not verified in this edition — confirm with the council's procurement team before assuming a figure. [22]

Above-threshold notices. Above-threshold opportunities are published nationally on Find a Tender (find-tender.service.gov.uk); below-threshold notices appear on Contracts Finder and on the council's own In-tend instance. Register on Sandwell's In-tend instance as well as watching Find a Tender: expressions of interest and tender documents are issued through the portal, not through the national services. [22]

A funding announcement does not itself create an open invitation to tender. At Friar Park the delivery partner (Keepmoat) and at Swan Lane the delivery partner (GreenSquareAccord / Morro Partnerships) are already appointed; supply-chain work on those schemes flows through those partners, not through a council tender. [9,11]

Skills and delivery capacity

Sandwell College, based in West Bromwich with sites across Birmingham and the Black Country, delivers construction courses including carpentry, joinery, painting, decorating, plastering, plumbing and tiling, alongside apprenticeships. A £9m Skills Centre in Cradley Heath was under construction and due to open in early 2026, expanding the college's construction and trades capacity. [23]

The regional West Midlands Construction Technical Excellence College is hosted by Dudley College of Technology — one of ten CTECs named in England following a 2025 Department for Education process, with delivery sites at the Construction Apprenticeship Training Centre in Brierley Hill and the Advance Centre in Dudley. Sandwell sits within Dudley College's regional remit; a Sandwell-specific construction skills hub beyond Sandwell College is not verified. See regions/west-midlands.md for the regional skills routes. [24]

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. Sandwell MBC Cabinet, "Pride in Place Programme – Governance Model", 14 January 2026 · source
4. Sandwell Council, Smethwick Pride in Place Programme · source
5. Sandwell Council, "Smethwick regeneration and investment plans submitted to Government" · source
6. Sandwell Council, "Chair of the Friar Park Pride in Place Neighbourhood Board announced" · source
7. Sandwell Council, "Smethwick Pride in Place funding programme is now open" · source
8. WMCA, "Sandwell and West Midlands Mayor appoint developer to drive forward 600 new homes in Wednesbury" · source
9. Construction Enquirer, "Keepmoat to deliver new 600-home urban village in Sandwell", 1 September 2025 · source
10. GreenSquareAccord, "We're delivering 147 new affordable homes in West Bromwich" · source ; project page · source
11. Midlands Investment Portfolio, West Bromwich Masterplan · source
12. Sandwell Council, Levelling Up Fund Round 3 · source
13. Sandwell Council, Sandwell Local Plan · source
14. Sandwell Council, Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026–2044) · source
15. Sandwell MBC Scrutiny Board, Housing Needs Assessment 2025: Summary of Findings · source
16. Sandwell Council, Housing Strategy 2023–2028 · source
17. Homes England, SAHP 2026 to 2036 guidance · source
18. Homes England, SAHP Continuous Market Engagement route · source
19. Homes England, SAHP Strategic Partnership route · source
20. Homes England, SAHP 2026–2036: strategic priorities in established mayoral strategic authority areas · source
21. Sandwell MBC electronic tendering site (In-tend) · source
22. Sandwell College, "Construction starts on Sandwell College Skills Centre in Cradley Heath" · source ; construction courses · source
23. Dudley College of Technology, West Midlands Construction Technical Excellence College — see regions/west-midlands.md · source
24. Sandwell Council, contact pages · source · source (think_sandwell@sandwell.gov.uk and Housing_Hub@sandwell.gov.uk addresses reported in secondary sources; council contact pages are the verified route)
25. WMCA, "WMCA and Sandwell Council deal unlocks biggest brownfield housing site in region" · source
26. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations 2025–26 · source
27. MHCLG, Pride in Place Impact Fund grant determinations 2026–27 · source
28. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme delivery guidance · source
29. MHCLG, Pride in Place programme prospectus · source
30. Regenerating Sandwell, Towns Fund Programme · source
31. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 2 expansion: place selection methodology note, published 20 March 2026 ("Sandwell | 1 | Tividale") · source ; MHCLG, "Local people take the lead in 40 more communities", 20 March 2026 · source
32. Sandwell MBC, Tividale Neighbourhood Board, public reports pack, 15 July 2026 (Chair Peter Hayward; Terms of Reference; 26 February 2027 Regeneration Plan deadline; town_deal@sandwell.gov.uk) · source
33. MHCLG, Pride in Place Programme phase 1: place selection methodology note ("West Midlands | Sandwell | Smethwick") · source
34. Sandwell MBC, Smethwick Partnership Board, public reports pack, 5 February 2026 (Chair Alan Taylor, MI Glass; Vice-Chair Jude Thompson, CSCM Limited; 28 November 2025 submission; updated Regeneration Plan responding to government feedback) · source ; Smethwick Partnership Board committee details · source
35. 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

• Sandwell Cabinet's 14 January 2026 Pride in Place governance report read first-hand (PDF): Friar Park (Wednesbury) selected as the borough's phase 2 neighbourhood; up to £20m over 10 years including £7.17m revenue; £150,000 capacity funding in 2025/26; Sandwell one of 95 places nationally for the separate Impact Fund; the council's own timescale gives 28 November 2026 for Regeneration Plan submission; the Wednesbury LUP board was considered and rejected as the Neighbourhood Board. [3]
• Pride in Place Impact Fund determinations read directly from the two GOV.UK publications: £750,000 for Sandwell in 2025/26 (29 September 2025) and £750,000 in 2026/27 (8 April 2026). [27,28]
• Friar Park Urban Village: Keepmoat appointed preferred developer, September 2025, around 600 homes, at least 25% affordable, on a c.32-football-pitch former waste/foundry/hospital site; decontamination planning expected to take two to three years. [9,10]
• Swan Lane, West Bromwich: GreenSquareAccord and Morro Partnerships delivering 147 homes for social and affordable rent on a former gas works site. [11]
• Housing Needs Assessment 2025 figures read from the council's own summary of findings: 20,423 households on the register in March 2025, up from 10,591 in 2022. [16]

Open items

• No Sandwell-specific target wards or project list for the £1.5m Impact Fund is published.
• No current council-wide procurement threshold (equivalent to Birmingham's published £25,000) was found for Sandwell's own In-tend instance.
• Whether the earlier 750-home Friar Park figure (WMCA Brownfield Fund, 2021) and the current 600-home Keepmoat scheme cover exactly the same land parcel, or whether the site has been reduced, was not verified; both are reported with their dates rather than combined.
• Sandwell Local Plan 2 (2026–2044) has no published housing target figure as at 19 September 2026; its relationship to the submitted Local Plan's eventual adoption is stated by the council but the transition date is not fixed.

Blocked or failed URLs

• https://sandwell.moderngov.co.uk/mgAi.aspx?ID=9463 (New Local Plan timetable agenda item) — HTTP 403 to direct WebFetch; retrieved via ScrapingBee instead (200), full content not further parsed in this edition.
• The Cabinet PDF at https://sandwell.moderngov.co.uk/documents/s31199/Pride%20in%20Place%20Programme.pdf initially returned an unreadable compressed stream to WebFetch's summariser; retrieved as binary and read with pdftotext -layout.
• sandwell.moderngov.co.uk PDFs (Tividale Neighbourhood Board pack, Smethwick Partnership Board pack) were retrieved through ScrapingBee (HTTP 200) and read with pdftotext -layout.

Verification 19 Sep 2026

• Sandwell has three Pride in Place places, not two. Tividale was missing entirely. Named on MHCLG's phase 2 expansion methodology note published 20 March 2026 ("Sandwell | 1 | Tividale"), £20m over ten years. Added to the dates table, the Pride in Place section and the local funds table, and the section retitled "three places, three cohorts, three clocks". [32]
• Tividale detail read from the Board's own primary papers (public reports pack, 15 July 2026): first meeting 15 July 2026; Chair Peter Hayward, volunteer at Oakham Church; board meets four to five times a year; first business Terms of Reference, board name and branding, draft financial plan and engagement plan; boundary change deadline 28 August 2026; Regeneration Plan and four-year Investment Plan due 26 February 2027; contact town_deal@sandwell.gov.uk. [33]
• The 28 vs 30 November question is resolved, not just reported. 30 November 2026 is MHCLG's deadline for the Plan to be received; Sandwell's Cabinet paper's 28 November 2026 is the council's own internal submission target two days ahead of it. They are not competing deadlines. Stated that way in both the dates table and the Friar Park entry; open item closed. [3,29]
• Smethwick Partnership Board chair confirmed from a primary source and the "not verified" removed: Alan Taylor, Sandwell Business Ambassador and business representative of MI Glass, Smethwick, with Jude Thompson (CSCM Limited) as Vice-Chair, read from the Board's 5 February 2026 public reports pack. [35]
• Smethwick submission date resolved: 28 November 2025, not December 2025. The brief previously carried both and marked the conflict unresolved. Also added that the Board has since agreed an updated 10-year Regeneration Plan responding to government feedback (March 2026). [35]
• Smethwick's phase 1 status upgraded to primary: confirmed on MHCLG's phase 1 place-selection methodology note. Friar Park's phase 2 status re-confirmed on the phase 2 note. [34]
• SAHP first-wave wording corrected in the milestones table: "£9.58bn to 33 strategic partners" implied a published total. The release states no grant or homes total; the partner table sums to £9,584.1m and 73,617 homes, each partner capped at £350.0m. [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 Sandwell award. [36]
• Impact Fund cohort count sharpened. The Cabinet paper's "95 places" was carried unexamined. Reading both Annex A tables directly: each determination lists 94 local authorities, 93 at £750,000 and one at £1,500,000, totalling £71.25m a year. Sandwell's own £750,000 in each year is confirmed and unchanged. [27,28]
• Procurement re-checked: Sandwell's own In-tend instance at in-tendhost.co.uk/sandwellmbc, distinct from the Black Country Portal and CSW-JETS. Unchanged; no published council-wide threshold found, which remains flagged.
• Citation numbers: all [n] resolve; four new entries added (32–35) without renumbering, and no collisions.

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