TV star in deal to build green homes

Mr McCloud, who is best known as the presenter of Channel 4’s Grand Designs programme, and his development company Hab are close to signing a new five-year agreement with the south west-based group, which owns 10,000 homes and is made up of Westlea Housing, Oxford Citizens Housing Association and Oakus Estates. The joint venture, Hab Oakus, can build hundreds of homes on up to four much bigger developments simultaneously.

In order to finance this expansion, Hab Oakus is thought to be in advanced talks with Dutch ethical bank Triodos to be the vehicle’s lender.

The bank, which entered the UK market in 1996, has already financed green-minded TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s River Cottage business and agreed nearly £100 million of new loan facilities with housing associations last year.

Hab Oakus is also understood to be at an ‘exploratory stage’ of talks with private equity investors as a potential alternative to the grant funding that it has been able to rely on to date.

The company is currently developing its first project, a £4.2 million 42-home social scheme called the Triangle in Swindon, with £2.5 million grant funding from the Homes and Communities Agency. The project is set to be completed in a year’s time.

Three weeks after newly installed housing minister Grant Shapps attended the ‘turning of the sod’ at the Triangle, the company has now been shortlisted for a much bigger scheme near Stroud.

Hab Oakus is thought to be one of two developers remaining in a competitive procurement process to develop a scheme of around
100 homes in partnership with a community land trust.

Also, in a move that is likely to spark controversy with locals, the joint venture has re-entered discussions with Swindon Council to build 180 homes on land near the city centre.

The 10-acre site, Pickard’s Small Field, which is owned by the council, was originally earmarked for development by Hab Oakus two years ago, but local opposition to the plans led to it being classified a village green site.

Mr McCloud hopes to build to level five of the code for sustainable homes for the cost of building to level three.

Isabelle Allen, design director at Hab, said: ‘We want to develop multiple projects. We like the idea of being regionally focused, and really like the territorial nature of housing associations. If HCA funding dries up, then we will find other ways to build. We are not adverse to doing projects on a much more commercial footing [than at the Triangle].’

Mr McCloud added: ‘There has to be some way of being able to build. We just have to be clever, lean and responsive. All our proposed schemes are in this region and not too far away.’

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