The third phase of Crookfields in Staveley is finished, helped by a £300,000 council grant. Castles & Coasts has not advertised any of the homes yet.

The last phase of the Crookfields housing development in Staveley is finished, and none of the homes have been advertised yet.

Castles & Coasts Housing Association has completed Swift Close, phase three of Crookfields, with a £300,000 Affordable Housing Grant from Westmorland and Furness Council. The completion is recorded in the council’s Quarter 1 corporate performance report, which goes to Cabinet on Tuesday 8 September.

Staveley is about four miles north west of Kendal, on the road and the railway line to Windermere, and inside the Lake District National Park. Building anything there is difficult, which is most of the reason this matters locally.

What has been built

The council’s report calls it a 25-homes scheme and says it provides a mix of Affordable Rent, Shared Ownership and Rent to Buy homes, including bungalows and larger family properties.

Castles & Coasts set the split out more precisely when the scheme was approved. Its own announcement in August 2023 described:

  • four two-bedroom bungalows, affordable
  • sixteen two and three-bedroom houses, affordable
  • five open market houses for local occupancy

So of the 25, twenty are the affordable homes and five are for sale on the open market with a local occupancy condition attached. Anyone reading the council’s line as 25 affordable homes would be reading it too generously.

What is in phase three of Crookfields, Staveley Bar chart of 25 homes: sixteen two and three bedroom affordable houses, four two bedroom affordable bungalows, and five open market houses carrying a local occupancy condition. Crookfields phase three, Staveley: 25 homes As approved in 2023. Affordable tenures are Affordable Rent, Shared Ownership and Rent to Buy. 2 and 3-bed houses, affordable 16 2-bed bungalows, affordable 4 Open market, local occupancy 5 Council grant towards the scheme: £300,000 Sources: Castles & Coasts Housing Association, August 2023; Westmorland and Furness Council Q1 performance report, Cabinet 8 September 2026. Graphic by Kendal News

Who built it, and the drainage problem

The builder is Russell Armer, the Kendal housebuilder now part of Genesis Homes. The affordable rented homes have solar panels, and Castles & Coasts said the homes were designed to be highly insulated to hold running costs down.

The hardest part was not the houses. David Brown, head of development at Castles & Coasts, said in 2023 that site constraints included “developing a considered drainage strategy alongside local stakeholders that adds no additional flows to the existing mains sewers in the village”. Approval came at planning committee, subject to a section 106 agreement.

Nothing is on the market yet

Castles & Coasts said on 9 July, in a Rural Housing Week piece on its own site, that it would “soon be releasing homes on phase three of a popular development in Staveley near Kendal”, that earlier phases had already delivered affordable homes for local people, and that it expected demand to be high.

When we checked its new homes page on 1 September, the only development listed was in Morpeth, Northumberland. Nothing in Staveley was showing.

The council’s report says the development was officially celebrated at a launch event. It does not give a date for that event, and Castles & Coasts has not published anything about the completion on its own news pages.

What it means for you

If you want one of these homes, there is nothing to apply for today. The practical step is to contact Castles & Coasts directly and ask to be told when phase three is released, rather than waiting for a listing to appear.

It is worth knowing what the three affordable tenures actually mean, because they are not interchangeable:

  • Affordable Rent is a rented home let below the local market rent. You rent it from the housing association and you do not own any of it.
  • Shared Ownership means buying a share of the home and paying rent on the rest, with the option to buy more later. Government guidance is here.
  • Rent to Buy is a rented home at a discount, normally 20% below market rent, so the tenant can save a deposit and buy it later. Government guidance is here. It is available in England outside London.

The five open market houses carry a local occupancy condition, so they are not open to anyone. Castles & Coasts applied the same kind of restriction to the earlier phase, requiring a demonstrable local connection to Staveley.

Local occupancy is not a small technicality in this district. The same council report records 17 discounted sales approvals and 38 local occupancy approvals in the first quarter of this year alone.

For what homes in the wider area are actually selling for, see our Kendal house prices page. Applications and decisions in and around the town are tracked on Kendal planning news, and Kendal council tax bands covers what a new home in the parish will cost to run each year.