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Two Castles Housing Association is celebrating its 40th anniversary of providing high quality affordable accommodation across the North.

Its anniversary year follows Two Castles’ most successful year to date – a year which has involved improvements in financial performance, effective partnership working and its commitment to the affordable homes agenda.

Two Castles began in 1966 as the Cumbria Housing Society to provide housing for people in need. Over the last 40 years, it has delivered many varied high quality projects across the North East and North West, and has specialist expertise in development within Northumberland and the Lake District National Parks and other rural areas.

The Registered Social Landlord now owns and manages over 3,300 properties for rent and low cost sale to single people, families and retired people. In 2005, Two Castles found homes for 582 people and let 351 properties.

Other 2005 highlights have included:

• an £18million refinancing deal, saving hundreds of thousands of pounds for investment in high quality, low cost homes
• becoming the preferred partner in the North for private property investment company Assettrust Housing, enabling Two Castles to develop more homes without having to rely on Government grants
• signing up with the award-winning Fusion 21, a pioneering procurement body to deliver more affordable homes and create training opportunities for local people across the North
• joining Spirit, which is already one of the strongest and best-performing partnerships of its kind in the UK, enables Two Castles and its fellow members to access Social Housing Grant investment to achieve further significant growth in its development programme
• achieving top ratings under the broad headings of governance, financial viability, management and development in the 2005 Housing Corporation performance assessment.

Newly-appointed Stephanie Murphy, Two Castles’ chief executive, said: “It’s fantastic to be celebrating our 40th anniversary after having such a successful year and we will be sharing our success with our residents and staff.

“We’re planning a number of events as a thank you for everyone involved in Two Castles, but we will also be celebrating our anniversary year by building on our success with even more ambitious plans.

“We have just made our largest ever bid to the Housing Corporation andTWO plan to expand our development programme to drive forward the delivery of more high quality and affordable homes across the North.“

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