Following a very positive and optimistic start to the New Year, Covid-19 seemed to creep up upon us and whilst we could/should have seen what was going on in other countries and prepared ourselves for what was to come, the cold hard reality has been anything but business as usual. However, in true ‘roll your sleeves up’ style, Richborough Estates has adapted swiftly and continued to progress business in as usual a way as possible.
So, despite the unprecedented times, 2020 so far has been a busy time for the East Division as we plot our recovery for the back end of 2020 and already start to shift towards 2021. In doing so we welcome new Central Region Director, Marc Wilson who joins us from Taylor Wimpey. Marc brings with him a wealth of strategic land experience from his agency and housebuilding background that will benefit the strong portfolio of over 20 sites that he inherits as well as placing him in a strong position to secure new deals.
In addition to Marc joining the team, we welcome our youngest addition with Steve (East Regional Director) and his wife Zoe adding baby Thomas to the Richborough family!
Since the beginning of the year new sites have been added to the portfolio in Solihull, Stratford-upon-Avon and Monmouthshire with a number of new deals agreed across the East, Central and South East Regions. More on those hopefully in next quarter’s round up as some are short term opportunities where we will be looking to submit planning applications when the time is right.
Despite the unprecedented times we are continuing to work closely with all our stakeholder partners and were delighted to see Tewkesbury Borough Council recently submit its Local Plan to the Secretary of State for examination. Our particular interest is a site at Badgworth Road, Shurdington where we will be ready to submit a planning application as soon as the Local Plan Examination process is sufficiently advanced.
Finally, the team is busy preparing planning applications for submission in Central Bedfordshire, South Northamptonshire, Charnwood and Hinckley and Bosworth and I very much look forward to providing updates on their progress in the coming months.
We continue to work with our delivery partners and are understanding of the challenges that they have faced, many of them choosing to close sites and having to resort to online presence to secure forwards sales. However, May saw both construction and sales activities return and as such we hope to be able to announce details of the delivery partner for our site in Halesworth, Suffolk (190 homes) in the coming weeks.
For us all the last couple of months have been very challenging as we all have our particular work/life circumstances to manage, however, I am convinced we will come out of this stronger and push towards a swift social and economic recovery.
In the meantime, stay safe and see you all next quarter when hopefully we will see more normality returns to our lives.