WhatHouse? Awards 2015 winners – L&Q, Housing Association of the Year
Posted 14 December 2015 by
Keith OsborneAs the issue of the affordability of homes becomes more and more prevalent, the role of housing associations in bringing new homes to the market takes on even greater and L&Q’s Gold for Housing Association of the Year at this year’s WhatHouse? Awards is certainly a major reward for another notable year for the organisation.
Awards event host David Walliams presented the Gold at the 34th WhatHouse? Awards event in London in November, in front of a record audience of 1,700 housebuilding industry figures.
Cathy Lloyd, sales and marketing director at L&Q, says: “This award is a great accolade for all the team here at L&Q, and helps to firmly position the organisation as one of the UK’s most prominent and innovative housing associations.
“Highlights from the last 12 months have included the completion of The Skyline Collection at The City Mills, Haggerston, our first ever £1m penthouses, as well as the growth of our PricedIn marketing campaign and website, which is fast becoming the go-to online resource for Shared Ownership buyers. Looking ahead, through our extensive and ever-growing development programme, we will continue to create quality new homes across London and the Southeast, developing long-lasting legacies and sustainable communities.”
The WhatHouse? Awards judges said of the company’s achievement:
“L&Q is becoming a genuine competitor to the big housebuilders in London and the south-east. It’s now involved in 20% of London’s housing development output and is planning to build 50,000 homes over the next 10 years, a scale of building that would launch it into the top five or six developers, private or public, in the country.
“Most housing associations can only look on in envy at the financial muscle L&Q brings to bear – a surplus of £209m in 2014/15 alone – and the power of the L&Q brand in the market. But L&Q uses its brain as well as its brawn. Like the innovative ‘multi-generation house’ at the £142m Chobham Manor scheme in the Olympic Park: a number of family homes will include a separate annexe, offering independent living to grandparents no longer able to manage alone or adult children unable to afford a place of their own; designing in solutions to two of the big housing problems people now face in London.
“L&Q is perhaps the first housing association to have built genuine market-influencing power in its areas of operation. It stands out for its financial strength, thoughtfulness, influence and ambition.”