ilke Homes has partnered with Crea8ive Sustainable Homes to deliver 76 sustainable homes to Evesham, Worcestershire – marking ilke Homes’ tenth deal this calendar year.

The modular housing company will acquire and develop the five-acre former hospital site that has lain vacant since 2018 in order to provide much-needed family housing to the market town, subject to planning permission.

Located close to Evesham Marina on the banks of the river Avon, the King’s Road redevelopment will be the first modular housing development in Evesham. The deal was brokered by regional agency Sheldon Bosley Knight – the second deal the company has worked on with ilke Homes.

This also marks the first deal ilke Homes has partnered on with Crea8ive Sustainable Homes.

The deal follows other major partnerships; including with Network Rail, housing associations Stonewater and Orbit, and FTSE 250 housebuilder Vistry – demonstrating industry confidence in offsite manufacturing’s capacity to deliver homes at speed, even in challenging market conditions.

The majority of ilke Homes’ recently struck deals are regeneration schemes, underlining the company’s ability to quickly unlock complex brownfield sites.

Tom Heathcote, executive director of development, ilke Homes, comments: “We are thrilled to be working with Sheldon Bosley Knight for a second time, and to be partnering with Crea8ive Sustainable Homes for the first time, and I look forward to seeing the transformation of this brownfield site into a well-designed sustainable scheme of family housing which will bring many benefits to the community as a whole.”

The King’s Road homes are designed to be highly energy-efficient and will reduce carbon emissions by a third against current building regulations. Manufactured offsite in a factory-controlled setting, they can be built to a higher standard than traditional new builds and ‘are extremely air-tight, significantly reducing heat loss’. The homes are planned to generate 10% of their energy use from renewable sources such as photovoltaic technology.

Plans for the 76 family homes – a mixture of one-bed maisonettes and two, three and four-bedroom houses – will be submitted to Wychavon District Council imminently. Subject to planning consent, ilke Homes plans to begin work on the site as early as February 2021.

The company will manufacture the homes at its 250,000 sq ft factory in Knaresborough, North Yorkshire, before installing them on site in Evesham.

As they are factory-built, modular homes are ‘more cost-effective to maintain, quicker to construct and have a lower carbon footprint than traditional brick houses’. They can be built with less disruption on-site and require fewer complex groundworks, making them ideal for brownfield redevelopment.

The development will be backed by government funding after ilke Homes secured a £30 million investment from Homes England to increase the capacity of its factory in November 2019 as part of a scheme to boost modern methods of construction and deliver more modular homes across the UK.

“Our objective with this complex brownfield site was to unlock it and ensure that it is developed out for family housing,” says Kevin Cubitt, director of Crea8ive Sustainable Homes. “This deal is a big step towards our goal to deliver sustainable homes for local communities. We are delighted to be working with Ilke Homes who share our vision for highly energy efficient and high-quality homes, and we look forward to working with them on future projects.”

Daniel Jackson, director at Sheldon Bosley Knight, which advised on the sale, adds: “We are delighted to have been able to broker such a positive deal for Evesham. We have been involved in the management of this site through our subsidiary company, Timothy Lea and Griffiths for many years and it is fantastic to know it will now be delivered positively by ilke Homes.”

With modular housing growing in popularity and seen as a fast, eco-friendly way of solving the housing crisis, we recently explored why modular housing is becoming the new normal.