Vistry wins Homes England deals for 900 homes

Housebuilder Vistry’s partnerships business has been picked by Homes England to develop two sites totalling more than 900 homes.

Homes England said a joint venture between Vistry Partnerships and Together Housing had agreed a deal to buy and build out a £75m 335-home housing development in Sandymoor, Runcorn.

The housebuilder was given the green light by the local Halton council last year for the scheme, which will include a 100-apartment retirement home in partnership with Halton Housing Trust.

Vistry, formed at the start of this year from the merger of Bovis Homes with Galliford Try’s Linden Homes and Partnerships businesses, was chosen by Homes England in April 2019 as preferred delivery partner for the 11-hectare scheme, which will consist of a mix of two, three and four-bed homes. The scheme is part of a wider 1,500-homes site, of which parcels have already been sold to Morris Homes, Barratt David Wilson and Bloor Homes.

Construction is due to start on site later this year with the entire project, which will be delivered in phases, due for completion by 2024.

In a separate deal, Homes England said it had recently agreed the sale of a 600-homes former hospital site in Kidderminster to a joint venture between Vistry and Citizen Housing. Vistry has secured detailed planning consent for the 49-hectare site, and will deliver more affordable housing than required by the local plan.

Chief land and development officer at Homes England Stephen Kinsella said the deals demonstrated the agency was continuing to support “ambitious partners who share our aim of delivering much-needed new homes”, despite the pandemic. He said: “While the housebuilding industry is facing a challenging time, it’s vital that we continue to work with partners to create development opportunities like this to help the sector recover.”

Stephen Teagle, chief executive of Vistry Partnerships said the deals took the number of homes being delivered by Vistry on Homes England sites to more than 3,000.

The deals comes as Vistry revealed plans to reward its shareholders new shares rather than pay out a dividend as the firm tries to deal with the fallout of the covid-19 crisis.

Back in March the firm declared that it had postponed its 41p per share interim dividend payment in the light of the crisis.

Now the firm has confirmed that rather than pay the expected second interim dividend, it will return value by way of a bonus issue through the issue of 4,369,992 shares valued at £60m.

Vistry’s share price fell by nearly 2% in the first 40 minutes of trading to sit at 757.50p.