Newcastle

The City of Newcastle is going through a period of considerable change. The vast investment that has transformed the city centre and the Quayside in particular has been increasingly rolled out to our residential communities to address (in some communities) quite profound housing market failure and the focus over the past five years has been on housing renewal and improving the quality of the housing offer in the city. There has been significant progress made and our ambitions for housing-led regeneration remain ambitious.

Newcastle is at the urban core of the North East of England. Building our competitive edge as a modern, sustainable city now requires a greater emphasis on managing housing growth as well as renewal. Indeed, Newcastle, in partnership with our neighbouring authority Gateshead, has just been designated as one of twenty new national growth points. Balancing growth with renewal however highlights some key challenges for the City Council and our partners particularly at a time of international housing difficulties. These include how to icrease diversity within the rented (social and private) sector, delivering more sustainale and affordable homes and exploring new forms of tenure that will allow residents to move easily from rented to ownership as their circumstances change. These are the areas we are particularly keen to explore through the SUITE project.