Housing Corporation and English Partnerships merge

The Housing Corporation and English Partnerships have today been merged to form Communities England.

The new organisation is expected to transform the way in which mixed communities are delivered across England.

Baroness Ford will head up a transition team that will include senior executives from English Partnerships and the Housing Corporation and will undertake the planning for the new organisation.

During the transition period, the individual agencies will continue to deliver their existing programmes.

The new agency is predicted to have more than £4bn of public funds at its disposal and will pioneer innovative and more efficient ways of working with key partners in the public, private and voluntary sectors to maximise the value of public sector investment in regeneration and housing.

The decision to merge the organisations and their functions was as a result of a Housing and Regeneration Review, launched in April 2006 by communities secretary Ruth Kelly.