United Trust Bank (UTB) is to fund the £5m regeneration of a city centre brownfield site being completed by regional house builder Factory Estates.

The Cambridge development, known as The Gateway, comprises 13 new apartments in a five-storey building with ground floor commercial space.

The specialist lender is providing a £3.46m, 70% LTGDV facility through its Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), a public private finance partnership launched by Homes England and UTB earlier this year to improve financial support for the building activities of small and medium sized housebuilders and developers.

Gareth Taylor of real estate finance specialists Excellion Capital approached UTB’s Philip Kirkwood with the proposal.

Although Factory Estates was a new customer to the Bank, UTB was convinced by the firm’s track record of developments around Salford and Manchester and quickly approved the £3.46m facility.

Chris Bowman, director at Factory Estates, said: “Philip and the team at UTB have delivered everything they promised quickly and efficiently. Being an auction purchase, we were working to tight timescales anyway and we inevitably came across a few additional challenges with anomalies on the legal side. UTB came in from a standing start and quickly recognised what was required and took a pragmatic view which enabled us to secure the funding without delay. I’m sure many other lenders would have found them to be much more of an issue.

“In fact, thanks to UTB and Gareth at Excellion, the banking has been the quickest and smoothest element of this project so far and that’s not something I can say very often. The Housing Accelerator Fund has really delivered what it says on the tin.”

Philip Kirkwood, director – property development, United Trust Bank, added: “I’m delighted that we’ve been able to support this Factory Estates development with a higher geared facility through our innovative Housing Accelerator Fund.

“Factory Estates have established themselves as a successful regional developer and housebuilder creating high quality new homes in areas where there’s an identifiable need and it has been a pleasure working with Chris Bowman to get this facility agreed and drawn in just a few short weeks. We worked closely with the Factory Estates team and their excellent group of professionals to ensure the funding was in place and enable work to commence quickly.

“This scheme is a great example of how specialist development lenders like UTB partnering with public agencies like Homes England can structure and deliver innovative funding solutions which give SME housebuilders the support they need to continue building. I look forward to funding many more Factory Estates developments in the future.”