CBRE sells major residential site to housing developer
Professional services firm CBRE has overseen the sale of a large residential site in North Leigh to UK housing builder Countryside. CBRE’s UK development team in Manchester was acting on behalf of the North Leigh Park Group.
The site 178 acre plot was sold with outline planning permission in place to deliver 1,800 new homes. Outline planning consent has been agreed for the delivery of a comprehensive high quality mixed use scheme comprising residential development with some employment use located in a high quality landscaped setting. An indicative master-plan has provided for a mix of apartments, terraced, semi-detached and detached housing to meet local demand and affordability, while the £310m scheme also includes a local centre, up to 18 acres of employment land, and around 44 acres of Strategic Green Infrastructure.
The location of the development means it will be able to link in to existing facilities offered in Leigh, Hindley Green, Atherleigh and Wigan. The site is well-connected, bordered by two major roads, the A577 to the north and A578 to the west, with Westleigh High School located to the south-east of the site.
CBRE was appointed to market the scheme in February 2018. North Leigh Park Group, part of Guernsey-based Long Port Properties, had previously been promoting the development, but Long Port put the business, along with several other subsidiaries, into the control of Deloitte administrators in December 2016.
Countryside Properties will now take on the project following the deal reached with CBRE. Countryside is a UK house building and urban regeneration company, operating across the UK, boasting revenues of £845.8 million as of 2017.
Commenting on the news, Steven Verity, a Senior Director, CBRE Manchester, said, “We are delighted to have secured a sale on this extensive and exciting strategic site in the North West. The site presented a strong opportunity for Countryside to deliver a new, sustainable community which, when complete, will inevitably contribute to the borough’s housing needs and wider employment and economic aspirations.”
A housing crisis gripping the UK means the news will go a small way to addressing the estimation that around one in six of the homes needed in the UK in the next 20 years have not been built yet. According to a recent report by construction consultancy Mace, as Britain prepares for life outside the EU, the nation’s Government should use the housing shortage as an opportunity to become a world leader in construction, which could create an estimated £40 billion export scene.
