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One Public Estate: Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF2) Round 1 – July 2022

Blue banner with logos of Office of Government property, Department for Levelling up, housing and Communities, and the LGArnment property

 

Round one funding is closed.

At the Spending Review 2021, the Chancellor announced a £1.8 billion package of investment to regenerate communities and level-up the country, unlocking new homes on derelict and underused brownfield land.

Up to £180 million Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF2) capital grant funding is available to all constituent English councils over a three-year period to support the release of council-owned brownfield land for housing. There will be at least three assessment points where applications for requests for BLRF2 funding will be open between 2022 – 2025.

The first assessment point provided up to £40m of funding. Round One funding is closed to applications, with DLUHC having announced that up to £35m has been awarded to 41 local authority projects.

The BLRF2 will support levelling up ambitions by releasing land for new homes. The fund will support regeneration in places that need it, restoring a sense of community and local pride and spreading opportunity across England so that every place can realise its potential.

The funding will be administered through the One Public Estate programme.

One Public Estate (OPE) is a partnership between the Office of Government Property in the Cabinet Office (OGP), the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC).Our joint aim is to bring public sector bodies together, to create better places by using public assets more efficiently, creating service and financial benefits for partners and releasing land for housing and development. 

As a well-established national programme, OPE works with 69 existing local public sector partnerships, covering combined authority, sub-regional and council areas.

Since 2017, we have supported the delivery of DLUHC’s Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF) and its predecessor the Land Release Fund (LRF), a programme which enables councils to bring forward surplus land for housing development.

To find out more about previously funded BLRF & LRF projects, including case studies of successful projects, visit our One Public Estate webpage.