Kent-based provider acquires more than 250 homes from L&Q

Mr Hook said: “Heart of Medway plays an important role in our overall growth strategy, allowing us to deliver more affordable homes and attract new business and opportunities.

“Dartford and Gravesham are important locations for us in terms of our development plans and we’re looking forward to investing in these homes and communities.”

Amy Cheswick, executive director of customer and transformation at MHS, said: “Our priorities are understanding customers’ needs and providing great local services, delivered by our new team.”

In December, Heart of Medway secured a £30m investment from the Pension Insurance Corporation.

The landlord said the deal gave it access to flexible, long-dated funding in a challenging macroeconomic environment for the social housing sector.

The news came after L&Q reported that its nine-month starts had plummeted by 82% and warned that its annual earnings will now be at the “lower end” of previous forecasts.

The 109,000-home association kicked off work on 351 new homes in the nine months to the end of December 2023, it said in a trading update last week.

This compared with 1,974 starts over the same period in the last financial year. The majority of starts are “later phases of existing developments”, L&Q said. 

In summer 2023, the group predicted that its annual starts would fall by 60% year on year. 

On completions in the past nine months, L&Q reported a 37% drop to 1,902, down from 3,007 the prior year.

L&Q first signalled that it was cutting back on development in 2021, when it revealed that its annual housebuilding target was being slashed by 70% to 3,000 homes a year.

Since then, a string of other large landlords have reduced their development programmes due to the sector’s mounting financial pressures.