Ambitions for growth in a difficult time for construction

The beginning of a new calendar year presents us with a chance to both look ahead to goals and ambitions for the next 12 months and to reflect on the past year.

At Genesis Homes we are looking forward to our most exciting year yet, having set our most ambitious growth plans to continue our expansion across the North West.

By the end of the 2022/2023 financial year, the business is set to achieve its goal of delivering 176 new homes, equating to over £52m in gross development value, with strong forward sales performance underpinning this delivery.

During the same time period, we will have commenced 10 developments which will result in the construction of a total of 757 over the next four years – with more than £235m GDV of committed delivery.

We are in this strong position to tackle the year ahead because of the planning achievements of the business over the past two-and-a-half years, even though the construction industry has experienced its most difficult times for generations.

The tsunami of challenges faced by the construction sector has been never-ending, and the headwinds we have faced since the outbreak of Covid-19 have been severe.

Some of the obstacles the industry have faced include the Covid-related impacts of reduced resources in labour and materials supply, the inflationary tremors which have gathered pace and caused the much focused review of building costs, and the appalling performance of a self-absorbed and out-of-touch central Government.

The stamp duty holiday was introduced at the end of the first Coronavirus lockdown to try to help stimulate the housing market, but the strength of Board opinion at Genesis was that developers could not directly benefit because homes couldn’t be built fast enough to take advantage before the scheme came to an end.

So we took the strategic decision to focus on high investment in land and planning activities for the long term – and it’s a decision which continues to pay dividends.

Government and local authority red tape is a constant challenge to our industry, from widespread issues in planning delays caused by nutrient neutrality or adoptive issues in local plans and use policies, through to simple lack of resource and/or outright lack of delivery from local authority planning departments.

But the decision to promote such a significant number of planning applications is bearing fruit and, given all the challenges we as an industry have faced in recent years, we are extremely proud to have consistently met our ambitious growth plans.

2023 promises to provide even larger growth opportunities as the team continues to expand and we as a close knit team look forward to working together to meet our targets – all from our new head office in Penrith which we plan to move into in the coming months.