Legal & General has hired a permanent chief executive to lead its prefabricated homes business, which is now running 12 months behind schedule.
Rosie Toogood, business development director at Rolls-Royce’s civil aerospace division, will join the L&G modular housing business this month. She replaces Nick Frankland, a senior L&G executive who has been in charge of the project for the past year.
The insurer insisted yesterday that it was perfectly happy with the pace of progress at its enormous housebuilding plant outside Leeds.
A first prototype home had been made and transported to a site in the south of England, it said, though it was not being lived in.
L&G said at first that the first homes would come off its production line last June, but the project has been beset with delays in the installation of machinery, as well as accreditation and planning issues.
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“We do everything in a careful way,” a spokeswoman said. “We’re not rushing. We want to get it right.”
L&G has big ambitions for its factory, which it says will be the biggest modular housing plant in the world and will start to address Britain’s housing shortage.
The factory will churn out homes — wired, plumbed and complete with kitchens, carpets and curtains — to be delivered by wide lorry. L&G says it will slash building times by reducing onsite demand for roofers, bricklayers, electricians, plasterers and decorators.
Nigel Wilson, group chief executive of L&G, said Ms Toogood was joining at an exciting time. “We continue to build houses the same way the Victorians did,” he said. “We need to build houses faster and more efficiently than ever. Rosie has a mandate to deliver this.”
Ms Toogood has expertise in precision engineering having also been head of Rolls-Royce’s compressors organisation. The target for the plant at Sherburn-in-Elmet is to produce 3,500 homes per year, and L&G will build more factories if it is a success.