The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) has secured a further £33m of new funding from the Brownfield Housing Fund (BHF).

It is the second tranche of money it has secured through the initiative.

Altogether £84m in BHF funding has been earmarked by government for the WMCA over a three-year period, with the aim of unlocking 7,500 new homes across the region.

However, to trigger each tranche the WMCA must achieve a series of delivery targets focused on ensuring its programme is on track and will deliver on the fund’s aims, securing wider benefits such as affordable housing and design quality in the process.

The £33m will be focused on site clearance and remediation of ‘difficult to deliver’ brownfield sites.

This next tranche will support a diverse range of housing and regeneration projects – from the restoration and conversion of unique heritage buildings into new homes in town centres to mixed use developments around key transport hubs and major brownfield housing projects.

Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands and chair of the WMCA, said: “This fresh injection of £33m from the Brownfield Housing Fund is a huge vote of confidence in the West Midlands and our ability to deliver on our promises.

“Developing homes and creating new communities on brownfield land has been one of the region’s real success stories of recent years, and we will now be able to keep up our momentum thanks to this latest funding.

“By using government cash to clean-up derelict industrial land we’ve helped create thousands of new homes and jobs, whilst also protecting our precious and irreplaceable greenbelt.”

Cllr Mike Bird, WMCA portfolio holder for housing and land and leader of Walsall Council, added: “The funding approval is testimony to the capability, ambitions and robustness of the WMCA’s brownfield regeneration programme.

“More importantly, it will give us greater freedom and the ability to set out funding criteria to deliver the best outcomes for the West Midlands – from our own definition of affordability to commitments towards inclusive growth and Advanced Methods of Construction (AMC).

“The funding is vital to leveraging private sector investment and demonstrating market confidence. Throughout the programme, the WMCA has established itself as a trusted partner for investors and nationally leading housebuilders and developers to deliver high-quality homes.

“We continue to exceed our housing starts target for this funding, with more applications and expressions of interest being received each week.”

The funding will help the WMCA in achieving its target of building the 215,000 new homes the West Midlands will need by 2031.

The WMCA investment also requires at least 20% of the new homes to be classed as affordable under the combined authority’s own definition of affordability which is linked to real-world local wages rather than property prices.