Resi wrap: Peabody’s hat-trick and people moves

Welcome to your weekly round-up of residential stories from EG.

It is all-change at Peabody as the housing association gears up for development with a hat-trick of stories this week.

New chief executive Ian McDermott outlines his merger strategy in this week’s EG Interview. McDermott joins from housing association Catalyst to take over from Brendan Sarsfield and oversee the merger with Catalyst, to create the UK’s second-largest housing association. The key to running a 100,000-home organisation will be its local strategy, says McDermott – taking the 22,000-home Thamesmead (pictured) as an example.

“With this devolved structure, what we are trying to really create is people with authority and power to do what the local area needs.” With a “strong engine at the heart of the organisation”, that will continue at some of the other larger regeneration projects in the pipeline from Dagenham Docks to central London.

Peabody has just lodged plans for 3,500 new homes at Dagenham Green. Some 1,952 private homes and 1,550 affordable homes are expected to provide housing for an estimated 7,739 people. Elsewhere, in Ealing, the group this week secured consent to build 549 homes at The Green, in a joint venture with Ealing Council.

Homes England is also thinking green – as it ploughs £46m into Octopus Real Estate’s new lending platform Greener Homes Alliance. The pair aim to support the construction of 750 homes with loans and interest rates tied to EPC targets, while also supporting wider sustainable initiatives.

Homes England chief executive Peter Denton said: “This new partnership, the latest in a series of impactful lending alliances, will give smaller housebuilders both the funding and the knowledge needed to build more sustainable homes.”

While Homes England extends support to SMEs it is also perhaps indirectly lending a hand to Britain’s biggest housebuilder, as the agency’s chief land and development officer Stephen Kinsella returns to former employer Barratt Homes.

In other people moves, Legal & General Capital’s CFO Stephen Haliwell is to move to the group’s later living business Inspired Villages as CFO to oversee its £500m investment strategy. Elsewhere, UK Regeneration chief executive and former government adviser Jackie Sadek has been made chair of the Ipswich Vision project. Her appointment comes six years after her op-ed on “Inspirational Ipswich”, in which she outlined why the city is “seen as an exemplar of urban regeneration”. After Sadek’s success in Biggleswade securing consent for 1,500-homes during lockdown, Ipswich can likely expect to go from strength to strength and EG looks forward to her next ode to the city.

View the magazine , download the app (iOS and Android) and read on for more of the week’s headlines:

Malaysian modular company pledges funds in £10bn investment wave

Number of BTR homes surges past 200,000

Get Living inks £155m deal for Maidenhead BTR

Has Swansea cooked up the perfect recipe for regeneration?

COMMENT Preparing to make splash in Swansea’s regeneration

Capreon and Rever Life team up for £500m senior living jv

Home REIT adds 366 properties in £166m spree

Europa buys £37m Mulbury BTR scheme

Gresham House inks loan for Sheffield BTR build

Stonewater loses legal dispute over development with too much social housing

Clarion takes Canary Wharf affordable homes