Creating communities to live, grow and flourish.

We believe that the pride and commitment of our staff are the key to our success. By ensuring exceptional levels of care and quality throughout, we aim to become the foremost provider of first-class affordable homes and to ensure the highest quality customer journey is experienced.

Focused on supporting the UK’s demographic and affordable living needs, and consistent with Legal & General’s housing growth strategy, Legal & General Affordable Homes is leading the evolution of the affordable housing sector with an aim to become the leading private affordable housing provider in the UK. Through collaborating with developers, housing associations and public sector bodies across the country, L&G Affordable Homes is forward-funding new build affordable housing, bringing volume institutional capital to the social housing sector with initial target markets being affordable rent, shared ownership and rent-to-buy.

The role holder’s primary responsibility will be to pro-actively source and appraise land opportunities through to conditionally contracting land then progressing schemes through the planning process.   The role holder will work across other the development disciplines, but particularly with the Development Manager who will take responsibility for leading schemes post planning through the build phases to practical completion.

The role holder work within a region to prospect for affordable housing sites, scrutinise and test the sites, driving development and viability, negotiate land acquisition contracts and work with the Development Manager to work on costing and delivery and ensure the effective project management of schemes through the prospecting and planning process and the efficient and effective handover of schemes to the Development Manager.

Reporting to the Development Director/ Head of Land and Planning, and working with Finance and Operations team, the role holder will:

• Undertake business development activities in relation to land opportunities, targeting pro-actively land vendors, land owners and their agents, appraising and testing schemes to understand viability.
• Weekly reporting on opportunities to the pipeline meetings and supporting the decision making on which schemes to pursue.
• Managing schemes through the due diligence process, working within the department to ensure technical reviews and legal due diligence is accurately and fully undertaken so that legal and commercial construction development risks are known and understood.
• Leading professional design, planning, legal and construction teams to progress prospective schemes through the planning process.
• Establish and then execute planning strategies in relation to sites to maximise the prospects of a planning outcome which enables the delivery of a scheme which meets the financial and risk parameters of the business.
• Working with 3rd party contractors and developments that have presented land-led opportunities to the business and working with these 3rd parties to test and appraise land-led affordable housing schemes.
• Lead the land acquisition negotiation process, working with lawyers and professional advisors as appropriate to ensure the risks in related to land development are contracted in accordance with the businesses’ risk profile and in accordance with any recommendations.
• Presenting land schemes in the required format accurately to the relevant decision making body and securing their input, and then for those schemes that are supported, to progress them through to contracting in accordance with any related recommendations.
• Effectively plan, monitor and disburse all items of expenditure associated with the land acquisition pipeline.
• Being responsible for the effective contracting and project management of schemes through the land prospecting and planning process to ensure they are managed in accordance with programme expectations.
• Ensuring that professional work and due diligence is completed to high standards and is accurate and adds value to development opportunities.
• Working closely with the Operations teams, ensuring that sites that are prospected are in locations that the Operation teams support and that the design of schemes is optimised to meet the tenure and design needs as defined by Operations.
• Working with the open market sales and shared ownership lettings teams to ensure the design and planning of schemes responds to market needs and opportunities.

Qualifications:

• Degree educated or equivalent
• Planning, surveying or architectural qualification desirable

Track record:

• Sourcing and contracting multiple residential land-led development opportunities
• Maintaining trustworthy relationships with landowners and agents that are current and potential future partners and clients
• Established track record in taking sites successfully through the planning and land acquisition process
• Pro-active business development experience in identifying current and new land development opportunities
• Creativity in adding value to opportunities to drive viability.
• Established track record in working with local authorities and planning advisors to take schemes through the planning process

Experience

• Planning and land acquisition in the house building or affordable housing or developer sector
• Detailed experience in successfully taking schemes through the planning and pre-development process
• Experience in the due diligence of sites and successfully addressing of site pre-development challenges
• Deep locality specific knowledge of both the social housing and wider residential sectors, in particular an expert understanding of affordable housing development
• Knowledge of developing new business relationships
• Acting efficiently and productively within defined decision making processes
• Commercial and financial management of affordable housing development schemes

Skills/ Attributes:

• A self-driven entrepreneurial spirit that embraces change and opportunity
• A highly commercial person that works collaterally with colleagues within and across the business with the capability of being highly effective in a corporate environment
• Ability to build new business ventures and teams to change business models and be “disruptive”
• Decisive whilst working at a quick pace
• Significant problem solving and “soft skills”