Redrow founder partners with longtime collaborator Will Heath and former Taylor Wimpey director to set up new firm
Redrow founder Steve Morgan has formed a strategic land venture with a former development director at the housebuilder and a former director of Taylor Wimpey.
Carden Group will be run by chief executive Will Heath, formerly group development director at Redrow, and is designed to offer landowners the opportunity to sell land earlier in the planning process than they might otherwise be able to do.
The new strategic land business, which will be run from offices in Cheshire and Buckinghamshire, will target farmers and other landowners, and will be jointly owned by Morgan, Heath, and former Taylor Wimpey strategic land director Harry Aubrey-Fletcher.
Carden Group has already bought one site – a 220 acre parcel of farmland at Treasbeare near Exeter on which the Group has submitted planning for a new 1,000-home garden village.
Heath said the firm had been set up because the business of developing land in the UK had become increasingly challenging. “Our focus is on buying freehold land with future development potential for larger residential-led projects requiring substantial capital investment and expertise, whether it be draft or allocated sites, or land with longer term prospects,” he said.
“The goal is to deliver high quality placemaking and thriving new communities. Once planning permission is achieved, the land will then be sold to local, regional or national housebuilders who share the same values.”
Steve Morgan and Will Heath already work closely together, with Heath also acting as CEO of Morgan’s investment firm Bridgemere Capital, and Heath chairing North west-based housebuilder Castle Green, which is owned by Bridgemere.
Morgan founded £1.9bn turnover Redrow in 1974 and left the business for the final time in March 2019, and was this year ranked 210 on the Sunday Times’ UK rich list, with an estimated wealth of £789m.
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