Year End Review - March 2024

Where do you begin on the year 2023/24 in housing?

Start with the positives… I’m delighted to report continued growth in our delivery at the 11-month shortened year end to March 2024. The growth has seen the business smash through our build target, with 154 homes delivered to CML in the 11 months. Testament goes to of our in-house delivery team and our supply chain partners, to each we are extremely grateful for your commitment in achieving this number of new homes constructed.

The growth resulted in 129 new home sale completions in the 11 months, with revenue of ￡34m. The company carried low stock numbers into this new financial year, and an impressive forward sales position of 50 homes (￡14m forward sales).

The business has reaped the rewards of a new marketing approach, focused outright on sales conversion. This has brought an 8x increase in visitor traffic from a targeted audience, and the results in Q4 and moving into the new year are promising.

We continue to take pride in our corporate social responsibility programme. Having completed a successful year of fundraising for Sunbeams Music Trust based near Penrith, we have now embarked on supporting #ANDYSMANCLUB club. #ANDYSMANCLUB is a male suicide prevention charity with national coverage, yet with local focus particularly in west coast of Cumbria where statistics for male suicide are some of the worst nationally. With our business delivered by such a significant number of male construction workers, I’m proud of our business decision to focus on this issue.

On a personal note, I’m deeply proud of the achievements of the business since its inception and first sale completion a little over 6 years ago. We have cemented our position as one of the leading housing providers in Cumbria, both in terms of output and in the type of quality - energy efficient homes that our county deserves.

We are also extremely proud to be a Cumbrian business. A true entrepreneurial startup, an SME, made up of local people, delivering the main societal need of housing for Cumbria.

Our pipeline land is now over 1500 units controlled outside of separate and growing strategic land positions, an extremely strong number on the face of it. Converted to years of pipeline delivery, we view it has 7 years of delivery backbone in our business. However, the toil of conversion to spade-ready permissions is an ongoing issue. It certainly cannot be viewed as ‘land banking’ and if it is then its ‘land banked’ or ‘land locked’ by council performance or policy issues.

Yet 2023/24 proved to be the most challenging in the industry to date (and I said that at the end of 2021/22 and 2022/23 and didn’t think it could get worse! But it did…). Despite a dampening of cost inflation during the year, the headwind was already such that cost increases were difficult to offset in a slower sales market and where values had stagnated. We had to continually navigate such market conditions, and keep a robust review of our overhead and performance.

The issues with the world of planning are well documented, and exacerbated further by nutrient neutrality issues which are holding up over 500 new homes in our pipeline. Navigating the legalities of S106’s has been tiresome and needless in some examples.

I'm pleading that our local authorities and county council start to outwardly and vocally state their realisation of the impact of the slowdown of new home delivery is having and will have on Cumbria. Several thousand homes are now held up, countless jobs have been lost, and many developers have had to reassess their business plan and appetite for the county.

The knock on effect for Cumbria is concerning and doesn’t seem to be outwardly amplified by those leaders responsible in the county authorities. The financial numbers when broken down are terrifying for the county – such lack of delivery of housing multiplies issues ten fold across so many areas, be it in S106 contributions, council tax income, unemployment, knock on of health and social care demands, general apathy and diminished aspiration in its population, etc etc – I really could go on. The recent Lichfields nutrient neutrality report details the impacts in detail – happy to share this with anyone by request.

I say the above because I care. Of course about our own business, but I care about our industry and our county and its people.

We remain committed to our current and pipeline developments. We have exciting projects ready to commence in Kirkby Lonsdale and Seaton near Workington in the coming months, and are hopeful of a solution to commence our Orton Road development in Carlisle soon.

Here’s hoping for a change in Government approach to housing post upcoming general election (it can't come soon enough), with finally some sense brought to nutrient neutrality, and then we really can start to coincide our development plans and programmes with the ambition that certain districts of Cumbria have in front of them, such as BAE in Barrow, the continued needs of our nuclear and energy coast, and the demands of the tourism and hospitality sector.