40 new affordable Council homes in north Manchester have now been handed over to tenants, and a further 20 new shared ownership homes bought by the Council to help residents on to the property ladder.

The 40, 2-bed homes located across six sites across north Manchester will be managed by the Council’s housing management organisation, Northwards Housing. The rental homes will be affordable to Manchester people.

The properties have been built by Willmott Dixon with support from Homes England with £1.4m grant funding.

The City Council has also purchased 20 new, high-quality family homes in partnership with Taylor Wimpey at Booth Hall in Charlestown, north Manchester that will be repurposed to support Manchester people onto the property ladder through affordable shared-ownership.

There has been a great deal of interest in the shared-ownership properties, with 16 either completed or in the process of being sold, with a final four left remaining for new owners.

The next phase of the North Manchester new homes project will be announced later this year and will include a further 150 new homes.

These affordable homes projects represent the first phase of an ambitious affordable housing investment programme that will see 6,400 genuinely affordable homes built up to 2025.

Since April 2015, 3,000 affordable homes have either already been delivered or are in the pipeline, with the full quota to be delivered by March 2021, and a further 3,400 affordable homes will be built by March 2025 – at least 1,000 of which will be social rent.

Following the First World War, the 1919 Addison Act prompted the first major wave of Council house building through the “Homes fit for Heroes” programme. The national campaign looked to replace slum dwellings and capitalise on the nation’s pride following the war to bolster new home building, driven by local Councils.

Although 1919 marked the beginning of a first swell in Council-built housing, Manchester’s Victoria Square predates this. The building that remains to this day in Ancoats was completed by the City Council in 1894 to improve accommodation for local people living in slum conditions.