Wheatley Plans £150m Loan
Wheatley Group is looking to borrow £150m from the European Investment Bank(EIB) to continue its regeneration plans.
An application currently under appraisal at the EIB describes the loan as financing the retrofitting of existing social housing stock to meet Scottish and EU energy efficiency standards, the construction of new low-carbon social housing and the provision of housing and integration for refugees.
Wheatley, which owns and manages around 80,000 homes in Scotland, issued the country’s first housing association own name bond in 2014.
The landlord was given the UK’s highest credit rating for a housing group by Standard and Poor’s in June this year, only for the ratings agency to downgrade the credit rating the following month citing the “increasing political uncertainty” which followed the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
Lending by the EIB in the UK last year totalled £5.6 billion and supported long-term investment in 40 projects across the country. This represented the largest annual engagement since the start of EIB lending in the UK in 1973 which has supported nearly £16bn of overall investment.
Earlier this year, Northern Irish housing groups Apex and Choice secured long term loans totalling £280m from the EIB.
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