John Lewis’s exciting venture into the BTR market has been widely reported recently. Here at Milligan HQ we’re pleased to announce that over the last 2.5 years, we have been working closely with the John Lewis Partnership (JLP) exploring opportunities within its extensive property portfolio for the development of Build to Rent apartments. This has been driven by JLP’s desire to contribute to reducing the UK housing shortage and as a way to diversify its business by becoming a developer, owner and operator in the BTR sector.
Milligan has acted at a strategic level, helping to develop a pipeline of schemes and overseeing the first three projects from concept and through to planning submission next year. The locations for the first three projects were announced in June 2022 as buildings over Waitrose shops in Bromley and West Ealing and replacing a vacant John Lewis warehouse in Mill Lane, Reading.
Working closely with the JLP team, we have appointed consultants to form specialist project teams. We have produced initial feasibility studies and viability proposals. We have been leading and co-ordinating discussions with the GLA and a number of pre-App meetings with the specific Local Authorities. We are also working alongside JLP in the overall corporate development of the business and on the initial exercise to harness a financial partner.
It is a significant undertaking requiring all of Milligan’s expertise, creativity and ability to co-ordinate and lead large multi-disciplined teams on very complex projects.
