Legal & General grows residential pipeline to tens of thousands of homes as it adds two new retirement schemes to its portfolio
Legal & General announces that it has broken ground on its latest later living scheme, a 10-acre site in Chandlers Ford, Hampshire and achieved planning permission for a new later living scheme at Broadbridge Heath in West Sussex
As a leading provider of housing, with a commitment to tackling the UK’s chronic undersupply, its residential platform continues to expand across all tenures, ages and demographics, with construction delivered both traditionally and through Modern Methods of Construction. Legal & General’s residential pipeline now stands at tens of thousands of homes in operation or development.
With a commitment to driving up customer service standards within the UK housing market, Legal & General is delivering strong Net Promoter Scores (NPS) – a customer loyalty and satisfaction metric - across its divisions, including its affordable housing business which has recorded a NPS of 56 compared with the sector average of under 10.
The breakdown of its housing portfolio now includes:
- Later living, with over 1,000 homes in operation across six villages, in addition to a development pipeline of 4,000 further homes
- Build to Rent, with a portfolio of 5,500 rental homes across 15 schemes
- CALA Group, Legal & General’s Build to Sell arm, is expected to deliver c. 2,800 new homes in 2021, with a development pipeline of 21,000 further homes
- Legal & General Affordable Homes which has a pipeline of 6,000 affordable and social rental homes, alongside shared ownership housing
- Legal & General Modular Homes which has announced its first schemes in Selby and Bristol and has ambitions to build its annual housing delivery to 3,000 homes a year in 2024
Its development in Chandlers Ford, operated and developed by Inspired Villages, will bring forward 151 new specialist age-appropriate homes, meeting strong local demand for later living housing. Over 65s in Hampshire are expected to rise to 91,600 by 2035 – an increase of over 200% since 2017. The scheme will not only help to meet this demand but also create significant benefits for Hampshire’s health and social care system, which has experienced significant strain since the onset of Covid-19. The works, which have now commenced, will create 110 construction jobs per annum over a four-year period, and over 35 permanent jobs once complete. This will help further boost the local economy and regional growth; playing an important role in a post-crisis economic bounce back.
Having committed to delivering all new housing stock as net-zero carbon by 2030, Chandlers Ford will mark both Legal & General and Inspired Villages second net-zero housing development. Transition to net-zero is part of Legal & General’s long-term vision for housing, where it has begun piloting energy-saving initiatives through design and operation. Legal & General Modular Homes’ portfolio, for example, already meets the government’s EPC ‘A’ rating as standard (only around 1% of new and existing dwellings in England & Wales currently meet this rating).
Alongside Chandlers Ford, Inspired Villages has also achieved planning permission for a new later living scheme at Broadbridge Heath, bringing forward 141 age-appropriate homes. As part of its commitment to increasing health span, both sites will deliver high quality facilities, including a wellness centre with a fitness studio, gym and swimming pool; as well as tailored care packages and treatment suites for use by GP’s and primary healthcare providers.
"Having established ourselves as a housing provider around eight years ago, we have worked hard to accelerate the growth of our platform. In order to address the structural shortages across every dimension of the housing market, we have deployed institutional capital at scale to revolutionise affordable housing, later living, the urban & suburban rental market, build to sell and to speed up construction through modular housing. We are proud of what we have achieved but there is still much more work to do.
As we enter a period of economic recovery, businesses like ours must continue to invest in our future and it is more important than ever than we deliver the houses that our society really needs. As a country, we are still falling far short of the over 300,000 new homes needed each year and it is important that the homes we build are also future-proofed and sustainable. Our latest later living developments are a great example of this, meeting the increasing need for quality age-appropriate housing and moving towards our commitment to have a fully net-zero residential portfolio by 2030."
Kerrigan Procter, CEO of Legal & General Capital