Joanne Boyes

Joanne Boyes can’t get over the space she and her family now have in their new family home in Nottingham.

“I couldn’t believe it when we were offered this house,” she says.

She and her husband Mark and son Jacob have moved into a three-bedroom house in the Bingham part of the city. Theirs is one of nine new homes built on the site of former garages.

The £1.05 million scheme was built by Rushcliffe Homes, with funding from the Housing Corporation, Metropolitan Housing Trust and Rushcliffe Borough Council. It was designed to tackle a shortfall in affordable housing in the area, which had left families like Joanne’s living in unsuitable accommodation.

“We’ d been living in a cramped maisonette,” Joanne says. “So this is wonderful. And it’s been finished really nicely.”

By replacing 16 garages which had been plagued by fly-tippers and vandals, the scheme has also cut anti-social behaviour and helped rejuvenate the area.