A new Portsmouth-based housing group has been launched with plans to build 1,200 homes a year.
Vivid Homes, formed after a merger between First Wessex and Sentinel, will build homes across all tenures and the new housing target is double what the previous housing associations delivered. Contracting out of new build work is set to increase.
Vivid Homes manages 30,000 homes across 20 local authorities in the South East, mainly across Hampshire and Surrey. It has around 70,000 customers and 1,000 staff, including its own construction arm called Vivid Build, and a repairs team.
Peter Walters, former chief executive of First Wessex, will step down from his transitional role as Vivid’s chief executive in six months to pursue other career opportunities, after which Mark Perry, who was previously Sentinel’s chief executive, will take over.
Vivid plans to offer a choice of housing tenures including social and affordable rent, shared ownership, market sale and market rent, reinvesting the surplus from both market sale and rent to increase the proportion of homes its builds for social and affordable rent.
Peter Walters, chief executive at Vivid, said: “We’re very excited by the positive impact that Vivid will make on our ability to build more homes for local people, whilst continuing to deliver great services to customers. Our ambition is to maximise opportunities to make more housing available and affordable to everyone.”
