You are viewing 1 of your 1 free articles
Luxury hotel and property developer registers for-profit housing association
A London-based developer of luxury housing and hotels has become the latest private firm to set up a for-profit housing association arm, Inside Housing can reveal.
Dholak Partnership Homes was registered as a for-profit provider of social housing by the regulator just before Christmas and will become the housing association arm of large developer Westcombe Group, which describes itself as one of “London’s foremost developers specialising in luxury refurbishments”.
The organisation’s list of directors includes Vraj Pankhania, founder of Westcombe, as well as Kamal Pankhania, managing director and chief executive, and Sunil Pankhania, operations director.
Kamal Pankhania told Inside Housing that the move to register as a social landlord would give it more control over the affordable homes on its developments.
He said: “The nature of the property market is changing now to buy schemes, not just in terms of what we want but also local authority demands for affordable housing.
“When the council finds out we are the land buyer and we are in affordable housing and we want to deliver affordable housing on site, then that will give them more inclination to look at the proposal more seriously.
“It is also with that need for the government and for ourselves to speed things up.”
Past Westcombe developments include a number of refurbishments in central London areas, such as Fleet Street and Old Street, as well as a number of outer London conversions of former period properties.
READ MORE
Its current developments include the conversion of 92 properties of the Grade II-listed St Bernard’s Hospital in Ealing and the conversion of the Bell Yard building near Chancery Lane into six luxury flats.
In addition to residential developments, the company has also delivered a number of hotel schemes through its Acre Hotels arm. Acre Hotels has recently put forward plans for an 18-storey 212-room hotel for Hilton Hotels in Trafford, Manchester.
The list of Dholak’s directors also includes David January, who was previously head of housing at Waverley Council, and Ian Beckett, who was previously director of development at Moat Homes. Kamal Pankhania confirmed that the two men would remain with company for the foreseeable future.
He said that the organisation already has a small property in Uxbridge where Dholak would deliver three affordable homes, and said there was a pipeline of developments over the next five years where the housing association could be utilised.
He added that the organisation would also look at buying Section 106 properties but said “nothing has been set in stone yet”.
Westcombe is the latest private developer to register a company as a social landlord with the regulator. Last year, the multibillion-pound property empire William Pears Group registered its MTD Housing business as a social landlord.
This followed moves by other major developers and property investors into the social housing sector, including giant institutional investor Legal & General and the world’s largest property investor Blackstone entered the sector through its for-profit provider, Sage Housing.
A number of other smaller and medium-sized house builders have also registered their own housing association arms to keep the affordable homes built in their developments in the past few years. These include £166m-turnover house builder Hopkins Homes, which said it had taken the step due to a lack of desire from housing associations to buy up Section 106 properties in the areas in East of England where it operated.