Highwood Group sees "abundant" opportunities in South Coast property market

With nominations now open for the Business Magazine South Coast Property of the Year Awards we spoke to award sponsor and 2019 award winner, Highwood Group CEO, Mark Baskerville.

The Highwood Group sponsors the Architectural Practice of the Year Award at the 2022 Business Magazine’s South Coast Property Awards.

Nominations are being accepted here >>

Highwood has built an extensive portfolio of legacy projects, which ranges from residential estates and inner-city regeneration to exclusive retirement developments and luxury care homes.

Company CEO, Mark Baskerville, described the south-central property market, currently as; “hot, but not without its issues.”

Admittedly delighted to be sponsoring the 2022 Awards, the Highwood Group CEO said it was doing so as “Highwood has a passion for property in our area, developing sympathetically and always with quality in mind – supporting the South Coast Property Awards ensures we can help to champion that charge.”

When asked about the opportunities in the region, Mr Baskerville replied: “They are, thankfully, abundant.

“We’re seeing continued demand across our three key products; housing, care homes and retirement communities.

“All answer the question of long-term demographic issues and the intrinsic desire of people to move to the South Coast.

“As a partnership business we are also flexible in our approach to match dynamics of our partners and look to work in varying different ways on each of our sites and feel this partnership approach is one that is gaining ever more traction.

“We also see a move to finding ways to provide more affordable homes a strong dynamic and are working hard with our affordable housing partners to try and deliver on this.

“By way of an example, our partnerships on our flagship North Stoneham Park scheme continue to prosper. We’re partnering with VIVID, Eastleigh Borough Council and Housing 21 to deliver a new community with a strong portion of affordable homes. We’re now looking forward to collaborating with a care and retirement village operator to join us on the site’s care home and retirement village that will begin to take shape next year.”

Quizzed about the “market issues” influencing the south-central property market, Mr. Baskerville pointed to a request by Natural England 2 years ago to halt granting of new planning permissions.

This is, he explained, due to the problem on the South Coast in terms of the impact caused by the issues of having to offset nitrates and phosphates and deal with water neutrality on some of our sites to the east of the region.

“Natural England has applied further pressure to the demand and supply imbalance by asking local planning authorities to halt the granting of planning consents unless offsetting or neutrality is proven and so we are now spending a lot of our time and energy finding offsetting solutions to enable development to carry on.

“The effect of the resulting delays on new developments within the Solent’s microclimate where the adverse impact of nutrients is so prolific it cannot be understated.”