A TEAM from the York office of regional law firm Andrew Jackson has advised Pickering and Ferens Homes, a leading supplier of social housing in Hull and East Yorkshire, on a £10 million specialist funding package to assist its expansion.

Pickering and Ferens plans to develop 122 new homes during the course of the next three years.

The organisation has raised £10 million using an aggregated bond issued by The Housing Finance Corporation through its Affordable Housing Finance (AHF) subsidiary, which earlier this year issued £161 million bonds priced at 2.61 per cent.

Pickering and Ferens was guided through the process of bond issue and the subsequent securitisation of the bonds to secure the funding by a team led by Philip Ashworth, corporate finance partner at Andrew Jackson, and comprising Helen Mellors, Matthew Smith and Grace Howell.

Pickering and Ferens’ chief executive, Claire Warren, said: “ We were delighted at the detailed technical input received from the team at Andrew Jackson and more than pleased that tight deadlines were achieved to enable a timely drawdown of funds from AHF.”

Mr Ashworth said: “This type of funding is unusual and was available to qualifying social housing providers through AHF, enabling them to flourish by having access to very competitive long-term funding lines.”