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Peabody to acquire South East-based housing association

London housing association Peabody has announced plans to acquire a medium-sized South East-based landlord into its group.

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The 55,000-home housing association, based primarily in London, will add Town & Country Housing Group (TCHG) to its organisation as a subsidiary.

TCHG owns 9,500 homes across 15 local authority areas in Kent and Sussex. The two organisations will now work on consents from lenders, the regulator and other stakeholders, as well as consulting with tenants, with a final decision due next year.

The acquisition would then complete by spring or summer next year.


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In a joint statement, Lord Bob Kerslake, chair of Peabody, and Francis Salway, chair of TCHG, said: “This move brings together two strong organisations to deliver more much-needed homes in the South East. We share a strong social purpose to support vulnerable people in housing need. Our combined scale and focus will enable us to do more together than we could achieve alone.”

The organisations hope to build 800 new homes a year across the South East – 500 more than would be possible were the deal not to go ahead. This would take Peabody’s overall development to 3,300 homes per year.

Inside Housing defines ‘acquisitions’ as smaller organisations joining larger group structures usually as subsidiaries, as opposed to mergers where organisations of a similar size join forces to create a new legal entity with a new board.

Peabody and TCHG did not use the phrase ‘merger’ or ‘acquisition’ in their announcement.

Peabody, one of the oldest housing associations in the sector, completed a merger with Family Mosaic in July last year to expand the size of the organisation to 55,000 homes.

This also saw it move its reach outside of London for the first time in its history – given that Family Mosaic owns around 2,000 homes in Essex and Kent.

The addition of TCHG to the group would greatly expand this reach and requires changes to Peabody’s founding documents which limited the scope of its boundary to eight miles from the centre of London on its creation by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1862.

This boundary has been increased three times since the organisation was created and will now be moved from 30 to 50 miles.

“It has been over 20 years since the last increase and during that time London’s population and housing needs have grown significantly,” Peabody said in a Q&A on the proposed deal.

“This will help us to broaden our offer while maintaining one of the largest programmes of developing homes for low-cost rent in central London.”

It added that it was “absolutely not” extending the boundary to move residents out of London – adding that “this year alone” it plans to start building 2,500 new homes within the capital.

It added that there were no job cuts planned saying the move was “not about efficiencies, reducing posts or making cost savings”. There will also be no changes to tenancies, lease agreements or rents.

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