A NEW multimillion pound deal could help meet Bolton’s “urgent need” for housing by building up to 750 new homes over the next few years.

This comes after Bolton at Home, one of the borough’s biggest housing providers, announced that its board has approved an extension to its new build programme and that it will likely need additional loans.

As such, the housing group says it will be seeking a refinancing deal to increase its loan facility from £100m to £165m.

Bolton at Home group chief executive Jon Lord said: “There is an urgent need for investment in both new and existing homes across Bolton and this additional finance will support us to meet that demand.

“It is the standard business model for housing associations to borrow finance to build new homes to increase the supply of affordable housing and increase our spend on existing properties, adding to the £40m we currently spend on repairs and improvements every year.”

The plan was presented to a meeting of the council earlier this month, which also saw Bolton at Home announce that it would have to increase rents in order to cope with the rising cost of materials.

To build the new homes, Bolton at Home told the council that some of the extra money is likely to be borrowed from RBS, while the rest will come from either The Housing Finance Corporation or The Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme.

The money will also be used to upgrade energy efficiency in homes that already exist.

Mr Lord said: “We have thousands of existing homes which require investment to make them energy efficient so that they are warmer, cheaper to run and have a smaller impact on our environment.

“We need to get all 18,000 of our homes up to a good energy performance rating by 2030 and that requires large investment in better insulation, improved windows and doors or energy efficient heating boilers or green heating schemes.

“At the same time, building new homes creates more options to support families to move, reducing the risk of overcrowding in homes and ultimately preventing homelessness.”