Covid crisis decimates profit at Countryside

Housebuilder Countryside has released half-year results to the end of March showing the scale of impact of the coronavirus pandemic in just the first week of the lockdown.

Reporting interim pre-tax profit down 39% to £43.7m, the business said its figures had been hit by the failure to complete around 90 sales and a number of land deals by the end of the month in its private housebuilding arm due to lockdown restrictions.

In addition, its partnerships business selling homes to local authorities and housing associations saw a reduction in total completions “driven by lost business in the second half of March due to the UK lockdown and cessation of site activity.”

It said this resulted in a hit to operating profit of around £25m, with the housebuilding business’s operating profit falling by 57% to £20.6m, and its partnerships business’s profit down 21%.

The firm reported turnover overall of £481m, down 5% on the £507m reported in the same period last year.

However, the business said it this week recommenced operations on four out of five of its sites, and had re-opened its modular housing factory (pictured, left), with which it supplies its partnerships business. It also said that it is still committed to open a second, larger modular factory next year as it was “important that we continue to plan for the future.”

Iain McPherson, group chief executive, welcomed the government’s decision to restart the housing market, but said that the “market outlook remains highly uncertain”. He said: “The first half ended in a period of significant uncertainty for all of us. As we move into the second half of the year, we have cautiously restarted construction on around 80% of our sites albeit with significantly reduced build rates as we adjust to new ways of working.