Up to £180 million Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF2) capital grant funding is available to all constituent English councils over a three-year period to support the release of council-owned brownfield land for housing. Round Two funding is closed to applications.
At the Spending Review 2021, the Chancellor announced a £1.8 billion package of investment to regenerate communities and level-up the country, unlocking new homes on derelict and underused brownfield land.
Up to £180 million BLRF2 capital grant funding is available to all constituent English councils over a three-year period to support the release of council-owned brownfield land for housing. There will be at least three rounds where applications for requests for BLRF2 funding will be open between 2022 – 2025. The first round provided almost £35m of funding.
Round Two funding is closed to applications, where up to £60m was available to councils.
Applications closed on 31 March 2023.
The BLRF2 will support levelling up ambitions by releasing land for new homes. The fund will support regeneration in places that need it, restoring a sense of community and local pride and spreading opportunity across England so that every place can realise its potential.
The funding will be administered through the One Public Estate (OPE) programme.
OPE is a partnership between the Office of Government Property (OGP) in the Cabinet Office (CO), the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). Our joint aim is to bring public sector bodies together in order to create better places by using public assets more efficiently, creating service and financial benefits, and releasing land for development to create new homes and jobs for communities.
As a well-established national programme, OPE works with 69 existing local public sector partnerships, covering combined authority, sub-regional and council areas.
Since 2017, we have supported the delivery of DLUHC’s Brownfield Land Release Fund (BLRF) and its predecessor the Land Release Fund (LRF), a programme which enables councils to bring forward surplus land for housing development.
To find out more about the fund and how to apply use the links on this page.
To learn about previously funded BLRF and LRF projects, including case studies of successful projects, visit the OPE homepage.