Hodson Developments has secured planning and funding to commence a new garden city project near Ashford, Kent, known as the Chilmington Green Development.
5,750 new homes will be built along with its own high street, a secondary school, four primary schools, a park and extensive areas of green space.
Alan Hodson of Hodson Developments said: “This represents the culmination of ten years’ work to create a community of choice in the town of Ashford and I am delighted see the vision now becoming a reality. The project will bring 1,500 new homes to the area by 2022 with 5,750 to be delivered in all.”
Hodson Developments now owns 90% of the site and will deliver the infrastructure for Phase 1. In addition, it has retained development land for the delivery of residential houses and the commercial aspects in Phase 1 and holds all of the land to be delivered in Phases 2-4.
The acquisition and initial development of the site has been funded by three separate lenders with the Homes & Communities Agency funding the infrastructure for the whole site and Titlestone providing funding for the land acquisition and initial building of 342 housing units. Close Brothers provided funding for the final land acquisition to complete the site assembly.
Kim McMurray, Fladgate banking partner who led the team advising on the finance aspects of the transaction, commented: “It is always a challenge to bring together three separate lenders with overlapping interests in a funding package of this type. It is a combination of the lenders’ commitment and the “can do” attitude of their advisers that has enabled us to get funding in place for this project to proceed. Alan Hodson has done an outstanding job in coordinating the various parties to ensure that that all of these landowners, developers, local authorities and lenders were able to sign up in support of this scheme.”
The project is set to be built over four phases and is expected to run for 20 years. Work will commence on site in April 2017 with first homes expected to be completed in early 2019.
