L&G housing arm acquires site for 1,500 homes

The insurer said this week that it has bought a 272 acre site at Arborfield, near Wokingham, which already has outline planning consent for 1,500 new homes, a school, shops and employment space.

It is the second major site being brought forward by L&G’s housebuilding arm, Legal & General Homes.

More than a third of the housing, which ranges in size from one bed apartments to five bed detached family homes, has been earmarked for affordable housing.

By building a variety of tenures on site and using off-site constructions, L&G plans to cut by a third the 15 years it says a 1500 home development would normally take to build.

James Lidgate, CEO of Legal & General Homes, said: “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 per cent improvement in delivery.”

More than 44% of the total site will be dedicated to public open space.

Legal & General Homes, which has opened its own modular housing factory, has set a target to deliver more than 70,000 new homes over the next five to ten years.

It has recently started on site at its first development, Buckler’s Park, a 250 acre, 1000-home development in Crowthorne, Berkshire.