Last month, Helix Group formed Helix Partnership Homes. Our newest venture, HPH is an SME housebuilder, which will build new homes on land sourced by the team at Helix.
HPH will be developing anything from four to 30 new homes on small to medium-sized sites.
This is a scale of development long vacated by the national housebuilders and larger regional builders. Furthermore, the number of smaller developers has fallen away sharply since 2008, with limited lending facilities being available, and the ongoing consolidation of housebuilders.
Filling a void
With the formation of HPH, Helix is responding to the Government’s call for organisations like our own to step into the void and help close the housing supply gap.
We have been encouraged by the interventions of Homes England over the last few years – in particular, its support for SME builders. There has certainly been an ‘uptick’ in smaller builders, like us, feeling confident enough to invest in sustainable housebuilding.
HPH will acquire sites from both the private sector and public sector, and our pipeline has been growing with several opportunities close to exchange.
HPH’s first deal
In March, we closed our first land-led deal – this is the result of many months’ work. We are purchasing the site – in Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire – from Homes England, and building 15 new homes for Cottsway Housing Association, which provides more than 5,000 homes to residents in West Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Worcestershire.
Both the site and the transaction have been complex – but they demonstrate that HPH is able to provide both practical and commercial solutions, using our team members’ experience working with much larger organisations.
From the outset, we have chosen to future proof HPH’s homes by committing to Future Homes Standard (FHS). So, during the last six months, we have invested in a suite of standard FHS house types, with our partnered architect, Hester Architects.
Making development happen
One of our ambitions is to help housing associations and other public sector partners unlock similar scale projects that might have otherwise been considered too testing and uneconomical to develop.
HPH has been looking at sites across the south of England, so watch out for news about our new developments, including two more projects in Berkshire and Somerset, where we are already in the process of purchasing sites, which will include our first market sale homes.
Get in touch!
At HPH, we work collaboratively with partners old and new to build brilliant homes on small to medium sites – so if anyone reading this article is a private landowner or public landowner and would like to know more about us, please do give me a call.
Charlie Scherer – Helix Director and Helix Partnership Homes Co-founder.
charlie@helix.limited | 01635 881377
