Land Securities has sold two-thirds of the Eastern Quarry site at the Ebbsfleet garden city project to Henley Camland, a partnership between UK private equity firm Henley Investments and infrastructure specialist Camland, for an undisclosed sum.
Property Week revealed that Land Securities had hoisted the ‘for sale’ sign on the huge tranche of land last September.
The two ‘urban villages’ planned for George Osborne’s flagship garden city in Kent have capacity for around 4,700 homes as well as leisure and commercial development, and have a projected development value of around £1.1bn. Land Securities has retained the remaining third of the site, which has capacity for a further 1,500 homes.
Camland has been working for Land Securities on the Eastern Quarry site since 2012 and Henley Camland was formed last June.
“[The JV] effectively couples Henley’s financial firepower with the experience Camland already has on the site,”
Said a source close to deal:
“Camland does placemaking and infrastructure delivery support. It does all sorts, but basically provides ready-to-build-on land parcels and then hands them over to housebuilders.”
The partnership now intends to prepare the various sites in the quarry before parceling them up and selling them on to housebuilders.
With plans for 15,000 new homes, the wider Ebbsfleet project is the largest and most advanced of the government’s much-vaunted new generation of garden cities, and has received high-profile backing from the chancellor – as well as £310m of funding announced in last November’s Autumn Statement.
In 2013, Ward Homes, a subsidiary of Barratt, acquired a 2.5 ha site from Land Securities on land prepared by Camland. The housebuilder is currently on site with around 150 homes under construction.
Meanwhile, it has also emerged that a senior member of the development corporation set up to drive forward the delivery of Ebbsfleet has stepped down just four months after the organisation’s chief executive resigned.
Louise Wyman, director of strategy at the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, is to leave the organisation at the end of next week in order to head up the wider garden city programme of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
The development corporation’s founding chief executive Robin Cooper announced that he was stepping down in December last year after just five months in the job. He was replaced by Paul Spooner, who is acting as interim chief executive until a permanent replacement is appointed.
The government is also working with local authorities on projects in Bicester, Basingstoke, Didcot, and in North Northamptonshire and North Essex.
Savills advised Land Securities on the sale.
8th April 2016 | Article by Adam Branson – Property Week
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