Legal & General has acquired a 272-acre site in Arborfield near Wokingham, Berkshire, with consent to build 1,500 new homes.
The scheme, which will also include a school, shops and employment-generating uses, represents the second major site to be brought forward by Legal & General’s housebuilding arm, Legal & General Homes.
It recently started work on site at its first development, Buckler’s Park, a 250-acre, 1,000-home development in Crowthorne, Berkshire.
L&G said it would apply its “unique multi-tenure approach” to speed up delivery, reducing the time taken to complete the homes by more than five years.
Arborfield is located within 15 minutes from Bracknell town centre. Construction for the first phase of new homes is due to start at the end of next year. L&G said the site is large enough to provide a full range of housing options, from one-bedroom flats to five-bedroom detached family homes. More than a third of the development will be for affordable housing and more than 44% of the total site will be dedicated to public open space.
Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal & General, said: “The Budget creates the right backdrop for a real boost to one of the key areas of infrastructure – housing supply. This is the first substantive supply side policy for almost 40 years, since council houses were sold in the 1980s.
“Legal & General will therefore accelerate our roll-out of housing and associated infrastructure including on larger sites where we can create whole new communities like Crowthorne and Arborfield. We welcome the chancellor’s stamp duty reform, which helps to address intergenerational unfairness, and would like to see this for young and old alike, enabling all age groups to access homes that best suit their needs.”
James Lidgate, chief executive of Legal & General Homes, added: “We have a chronic housing shortage in the UK and speeding up the delivery of new supply is key to tackling this crisis. Adopting a multi-tenure approach means that we can create homes in a much shorter timescale as well as supporting people throughout their different life stages. Rather than taking 15 years to build 1,500 new homes, we believe that we could achieve a 50% improvement in delivery.”
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