A new East Anglian housing developer says it is putting design at the heart of its business - with new sites in Mattishall and Mendlesham.
Good design is non-negotiable for housing developer Jamieson Bird.
He’s spent most of his career in the industry, spending the past 27 years working with housing associations and housebuilders as an independent planning consultant and a land promoter, and now he’s heading up new housebuilder Bayfield Homes.
He founded the Norfolk-based developer in October last year after shareholders at his former employer, Fleur Homes, decided to take their business in a different direction.
“It presented an opportunity for me and some of the team I was working with to create this new business and for us to continue – with some real enthusiasm – to develop the sort of thing we like doing.”
As a result, he and seven other staff members formed Bayfield Homes, which he describes as a “design-based” business, a culmination of all the things he has learnt throughout his career.
“Design is just absolutely core in what we do and certainly my mantra in taking the business forward.”
After setting up, the firm quickly acquired two sites – a 28-property development in Mendlesham in Suffolk and a 24-property site in Mattishall, near Dereham – where work has already started.
Once complete, Harewood in Mendlesham will offer a mix of one-, two-, three- and four-bedroom homes all set in 1.5 hectares of green space, with a show home and sales starting in November this year.
The homes at Southmere Place in Mattishall will be slightly bigger, offering two, three and four bedrooms. The show home will open in November this year, and sales are expected to start in January 2024.
Mr Bird says the firm’s USP is its dedication to design, which he hopes will break the mould when it comes to what a new-build can be.
He says he’s tired of seeing new build developments that are “formulaic” with “grid-like schemes” and cares less about profit and more about placemaking. “It’s not just about enjoying your home, it’s about enjoying the space that sits around your home,” he says.
“I don’t believe that design and profitability need to be exclusive from one another – I think we can achieve both.”
While some developers might think first about density, the team at Bayfield thinks more about the community it is trying to build.
“When we approach a site, we’re looking at what landscape features we can keep, not what we can remove,” he explains. “How we can use what’s there already to actually enhance and create a space, and that’s where value comes too.
“I don’t want what we do to just be about developing pretty houses but developing houses that sit well within their context. I want them to be places where people can actually live and enjoy being there.”
To achieve this, he says the team need to be working on much bigger sites, which is something they’re looking ahead to doing.
“I’m really keen for us to show off some of the skills we’ve got and embrace much of what Michael Gove has been talking about of late – about bringing good design back in to new schemes and giving local authorities the teeth to actually refuse schemes that are either over dense or don’t respect good quality design.
“For us, that’s really important. We won’t always do that in a development the scale of Mendlesham, but I think we’ve got a pretty good scheme in both the developments we have, and that’s the ambition: to really put design front and centre in all that we do.”
He says Bayfield Homes is fundamentally a buyer as well as a developer. “We like brownfield sites. The more complex and challenging, the better. It’s all about the site for us, and I’m a bit of a problem-solver by heart – I quite like that.”
Giving back to the community is also part of the firm’s ethos.
“One of the things that really drives me is that a lot of the sites I’ve done historically – and Bayfield will continue to do – is to create developments that are very much around community benefit, be it tenure mix or looking for things that the parish council want to achieve.”
Mr Bird says the team is working with Babergh and Mid Suffolk Council, rather than a housing association, to bring its mix of tenure options to buyers in Suffolk.
And that includes sustainability too. The team is conscious and proactive about incorporating sustainability into its buildings – and careful to make sure this is reflected logistically too, from how far away its tradespeople live to the materials used.
“We take a fabric-first approach to energy efficiency, including air source heat pumps and supplying electric car charging points to the actual dwellings themselves,” Mr Bird explains. “They’re very efficient in those terms, and we of course use materials very, very carefully.
“We have to balance the requirements of conservation areas and AONBs in the context of which we work.
“What we’re also doing at Mendlesham and Mattishall is appointing local trades and looking very carefully at the routes and the travel plans that they undertake to us – and likewise where we’re carting away soil and so on and reusing as much of it as we can on site.”
Mr Bird believes that while they’re looking “very carefully” at this, they, like much of the industry, could do more.
“We will certainly, as a business, do a lot more as we move into future sites. We’re at a starting point, really, but we can – and will be – doing better.”
Going forward, Mr Bird hopes that the team will be managing three sites at any one time – a bold ambition considering the company is less than six months old.
“It’s been a swift start,” Mr Bird admits. “We’ve been quite lucky [with our two other sites] because they were sites that were pretty much ready to go.
“We’ve got a pipeline of new sites coming forward, a really supportive funder and a great team with me, so as a start to a new business – we’re pretty excited about the future.”
For more information, visit bayfieldhomes.co.uk
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