Trafford Housing Trust and L&Q have joined forces with Willmott Dixon to bring forward the development of Homes England’s coveted D’Urton Lane site in Preston. The scheme will create 250 new homes for Shared Ownership, affordable rent and private sale.

Situated on D’Urton Lane in the Fulwood area of Preston, the £47m development will consist of a mixture of two, three and four-bedroom homes and will also include green space. Over half of the homes will be affordable housing, either for Shared Ownership or affordable rent. The remaining homes will be for outright sale.

Trafford Housing Trust, L&Q and Willmott Dixon have created a joint venture company, Laurus Partnership Homes LLP, to deliver the project. Subject to planning approval, the joint venture partnership will purchase the land for development and begin construction in 2019. Willmott Dixon will deliver the homes at an accelerated pace, which reflect a key element of the Government’s 300,000 homes per annum target.

Larry Gold, chief executive at Trafford Housing Trust, said: “D’Urton Lane meets our core objective of tackling the current housing crisis, which is leaving hard working families struggling to make ends meet, and reflects our commitment to developing affordable homes. We are proud of our innovative development model which sees us reinvest all profits into providing more new homes and supporting wider social purpose initiatives – a model which we believe should be rolled out across the sector.

Anthony Dillon, managing director of Willmott Dixon in the North, said: “Trafford Housing Trust and Willmott Dixon recently delivered the Limelight development on Shrewsbury Street in Old Trafford and will be bringing this collaboration to Preston as partners in this LLP. For our community focused businesses, we’ll deliver more than high quality new homes as the D’Urton Lane project is a great opportunity to achieve a wide range of community benefits. These include apprenticeships and work experience for local people of all ages as well as working closely with local schools and colleges to leave a lasting legacy.

“As part of Laurus Partnership Homes we will work tirelessly in establishing a partnership with Homes England and its stakeholders to deliver a high-quality development which delivers aspirational new homes and achieves an accelerated pace of delivery.”

Situated among excellent transport links, D’Urton Lane has easy access to both the M6 and M55. In addition, the development aims to provide a significant boost to Preston City Council’s ambitious North West Preston Masterplan and will help to create a new vibrant community, targeting downsizers, and first-time buyers, including through Help to Buy.

Duncan Inglis, Head of Accelerated Delivery at Homes England, said: “Homes England is delighted to see a high quality contemporary proposal for this prestigious site, which will provide a scheme of 250 new homes, 127 of which will be affordable housing. Once on site our selected developer will embrace Modern Methods of Construction to help increase the speed of construction and build out. They will adopt a sub-assemblies and components approach, which includes building techniques such as the installation of pre-cast ground floors, first floor cassettes, and installing pre-formed wiring looms.”

Trafford Housing Trust and Willmott Dixon also recently worked in partnership on Trafford’s Limelight development, an innovative over 55’s Extra Care scheme which is also a community, health and wellbeing hub for the public.