Peabody and Catalyst complete 104,000-home ‘mega-merger’

Peabody and Catalyst have completed their merger to create a £900m-turnover housing association

The giant associations have today joined to form a 104,000-home provider, with Catalyst initially becoming a subsidiary before folding into Peabody in around a year’s time.

The enlarged Peabody is planning to build around 3,000 homes a year following the merger, around the same amount as the two organisations did separately. However chief executive Ian McDermott told Housing Today last October that the merger would create resilience to allow it to deal with ‘headwinds’ from increased building safety, zero carbon and inflationary costs without having to ‘throttle back’ on development.

Peabody is now putting together a new regional structure, with six managing directors having responsibility for development and providing services in specific geographical locations. The six MDs are being recruited internally and will be announced publicly in the next few weeks.

McDermott said: “Our increased scale will allow us to invest more in services, homes, technology and our people.

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“We want to transform our services for the better, working with customers to create and design services that help them get things done easily and quickly. We’ll be focused on getting the basics right, including delivering an effective repairs service, and also fostering a people-first culture throughout the organisation.”

Lord Kerslake, chair of Peabody, said: “We’re passionate about creating a sustainable Peabody and are committed to developing new social homes and investing in communities and care and support services.