Legal & General has hired Rosie Toogood to head up its new modular housing business.
Toogood will join the company in mid-June as chief executive and moves from car manufacturer Rolls-Royce, where she held senior roles across the company and is currently business development director for its civil aerospace business.
The new appointment forms part of L&G’s plans to build 3,000 homes a year and a pipeline of 70,000 homes over the next decade from its new factory in Leeds.
The £55m facility is expected to be the largest modular factory in Europe when opened and was first announced in February 2016. It has already had a number of false starts, with units originally planned to be rolling off the production line at the beginning of the year.
Prior to joining Rolls-Royce, Toogood trained with Ernst & Young as a chartered accountant and holds an MBA in Strategy & Procurement. She also served for eight years as a non-executive board member of Derwent Housing Association.
Toogood’s hiring is the latest boost to L&G’s offsite business. Last month the company hired Essential Living’s Damon Brown as construction portfolio manager as well as Berkeley’s David Jones as modular integration director.
Nigel Wilson, chief executive of Legal & General, commented: “Almost every other industry has seen radical innovation brought about by digital technology advancements. And yet we continue to build houses the same way that the Victorians did. We need more entrants to the sector, new technologies and business models to deliver the 100,000 shortfall of new homes.
“Just as the car industry was automated, so the UK’s traditional house building sector now needs to step up. We need to build houses faster and more efficiently than ever before. Rosie has a mandate to deliver this.”
