Keepmoat plans 750 offsite homes a year under new brand

The developer’s new offsite brand, which launches next week in partnership with offsite specialist Elliott, is planning to produce as many as 250 units in 2018 at its assembly plant at Carnaby in East Riding of Yorkshire. In the following year, Ilke Homes could open another factory capable of producing 500 units.

Next Wednesday, the company will unveil its pilot scheme of 60 units, which have been built at the Yorkshire factory, and will be installed on five sites for five “key clients”. These will include a mixture of housing associations and local authorities – two of which will be Luton City Council and Waltham Forest – and Keepmoat’s own housebuilding company, Keepmoat Homes.

David Sheridan, chief executive of Keepmoat, said the 60 units would allow the company to test the products at the installation and usability stages between now and December, before it embarks on a bigger quantity of units next year.

He said Keepmoat was currently speaking to the G15 group of the 15 largest housing associations in London and that it was a question of finding the right locations for Keepmoat to create “additionality” through factory building.

He said: “We don’t want to take stock away from schemes that are already being developed, so if you have a scheme that currently contains 1,200 units, we would be looking to take that up to 1,250 units, for example. This way, we think we can increase capacity in the housebuilding market.”

Keepmoat and Elliott are both backed by private equity house TDR Capital. Mr Sheridan did not rule out the potential for the joint venture to seek a third-party backer such as the Homes and Communities Agency or a traditional funder.