FCHO celebrates winning a prestigious housing industry award for its flagship £20 million West Vale development

First Choice Homes Oldham (FCHO) is celebrating winning a prestigious housing industry award for its flagship £20 million West Vale development.

The social housing provider won the Best Affordable Housing Development at the Housing Executive Awards held in Bolton last week - beating four others from across the country. 

The award was collected by FCHO’s head of development Nick Anderson, senior clerk of works Chris Taylor and neighbourhood coordinator Martin Harrop. 

James Kelly from West Vale’s architect PRP and Colin Barry, from Markhams were also on stage with FCHO on Tuesday at the Toughsheet Community Stadium. 

Pictured above: FCHO Winner: Best Affordable Housing Development.

Judges said the “outstanding feature” of the 88-home project in Coldhurst “was the way it created synergy with the wider community, not just through infrastructure, but also by providing work placements and funding energy efficiency measures for other local residents". 

FCHO also received a “highly commended” at the event in the Best Retrofit Initiative category for “delivering one of the region’s largest retrofit programmes by improving more 350 homes while reducing fuel poverty and emissions”, the judges explained. 

The housing association’s chief executive Mark Gifford said: “The whole of FCHO is absolutely thrilled at the win and the commendation for two key projects we have delivered over the last few years. 

“It is a vote of confidence from our peers that we are doing the right projects well and I would like to thank both teams for their excellent work that is now recognised in such a prestigious way. 

“We are proud of them and they should be proud of themselves.” 

West Vale is FCHO’s biggest scheme so far and it was completed this year by the developer Caddick Construction. It is a mixture of 26 two, three and four-bedroom houses for shared ownership and 62 one and two-bed apartments for affordable rent. All are high-quality and sustainable homes. 

They replaced the unfit for purpose tower blocks Crossbank House and Summervale House on the brownfield site.