Galliford Try buys Shepherd Homes sites

Galliford Try has acquired 11 Yorkshire housing sites from Shepherd Homes, further expanding its rapidly-growing housebuilding business Linden Homes.

In a trading update to investors this morning, Galliford Try said it exchanged contracts yesterday with Shepherd Homes’ parent company Shepherd Group for the sites, which are good for 515 homes. The deal comprises six live sites and five in planning.

Galliford Try also provided an update on trading for the year-to-date. The firm said its housebuilding operations, Linden Homes and developer Galliford Try Partnerships, had amassed a record landbank of 15,000 plots.

Galliford Try’s contracting business has upped its order book to £3.3bn, up from £3.2bn at the end of 2014.

Greg Fitzgerald, outgoing executive chairman of Galliford Try, said: “All businesses - Linden Homes, Partnerships and Construction - continue to perform well with favourable market demand against a background of continuing challenges on the labour supply side in all sectors.”

Galliford Try announced last month it has recruited a new chief executive, Peter Truscott, from housebuilder Taylor Wimpey.

Truscott - currently divisional chairman for the South at Taylor Wimpey - will become chief executive of Galliford Try on 1 October 2015, taking over from Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald will step back to become non-executive chairman from 1 January 2016, before planning to retire from the board in November 2017.