Northern England housing association consortium JV North said it will invest £335.5 million to build nearly 3,000 homes over the next four years.

The consortium of 10 landlords in Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and Nottingham said it received a grant of £87.3 million from the Homes and Communities Agency’s Shared Ownership Affordable Homes Programme.

The consortium’s members will invest £248.2 million of their own funds, taking the overall total to £335.5 million.

Of the 2,758 homes to be built, 1,269 will be for shared ownership, 1,063 for rent to buy and 426 will be specialist housing for rent.

JV North Chairman, Nigel Wilson, who is also chief executive at Wythenshawe Community Housing Group said: “We are delighted with the size of the grant awarded which reflects JV North’s strong track record of building homes.

“The overall investment is more than a third of a billion pounds.

“This demonstrates our ambition and determination to deliver much-needed new homes in our communities and offer a range of tenures to meet demand.

“We acknowledged a number of years ago that there was a looming housing problem in the areas we operate.

“Working as a consortium we have sought to do all we can to address this and the level of support from the HCA is very welcome, so too is the timing of this announcement as we renew our consultants and contractors framework later this month.

“The successful bid presents challenges and opportunities to our members as the majority of our homes have historically been built for social and affordable rent.

“We now need to ensure we have the right tools and resources to help sell the properties once built while at the same time pressing ahead with our 2015/18 Affordable Homes Programme that will see us build 2,172 homes by the end of March next year.”