L&G poaches Rosie Toogood to lead modular housing arm

Legal & General (L&G) has hired Rosie Toogood as chief executive of its modular housing business.

The firm has hired Toogood from Rolls Royce to lead the company’s modular housing into its “crucial” delivery stage. She is due to start work at L&G later this month.

L&G said it planned to deliver 3,500 flatpack homes a year from a Yorkshire factory, in a bid to tackle the UK’s housing crisis.

A chartered accountant, Toogood is currently business development director for Rolls Royce’s Civil Aerospace business. She was previously executive vice president of the Compressors organisation and served for eight years as a non-executive board member of Derwent Housing Association. She holds an MBA in Strategy & Procurement.

“Rosie is joining the business at an exceptionally exciting time,” said L&G chief executive Nigel Wilson.

“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.”

Toogood joins two more recent L&G hires as part of the company’s modular housing push. Building reported last month that Damon Brown will serve as a construction manager and David Jones as modular integration director.

Explaining the latest construction drive, Paul Stanworth, chief executive of Legal & General Capital, said: “Modular building is quicker and more efficient, and delivers at least the same or higher standards of building as traditional methods but with greater certainty.

“Crucially it is also far less labour intensive, providing additional capacity to the established UK housing sector at a critical time.  It offers an economically viable solution and will deliver much needed scale.”