Construction division of Liverpool city region housing association Torus reveals record-breaking year with 40% rise in revenues to £108m and 875 new homes built. Tony McDonough reports
Torus Developments is reporting a record year for revenues and number of homes built.
A standalone division of Liverpool city region housing association Torus, Torus Developments (TD) has filed its annual accounts for the 12 months to March 31, 2024, on Companies House.
They show record revenues of £108m, up from £77.3m in the previous year, and pre-tax profits more than doubling to just under £1.2m. The business completed 875 new homes during the year, also a record.
It also said that it started building 1,033 new homes during the 12-month period and at the end of the year was on site on 52 separate schemes on site totalling 4,139 new homes.
TD employs around 50 people directly with the construction work carried out by separate contractors. Higher inflation leading to higher costs had an impact on the solvency of contractors and this has proved to be the “biggest single challenge to delivery”.
As a consequence the housing association parent had taken a “pragmatic approach” and had offered assistance with cost inflationary pressures on fixed-price contracts.
Writing in the report, Robert Hepworth, chair of TD said this approach “was welcomed by contractors and provided Torus with greater certainty of contractors’ ability to complete schemes in the future”.
He added: “The latter part of 2023/24 did see some levelling off and even a slight reduction in construction costs but throughout the year, inflation remained stubbornly high, and this was factored into a number of works contracts.”
This support for TD and its contractors had, in turn, contributed to what was described as “another challenging year” for the housing association, which has a portfolio of 40,000 homes. It saw its surplus fall 45% to just under £20m from £38.1m the year before.
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TD is supporting Torus’s strategy of building 10,000 new homes across the North West by 2032. The bulk of these will be in the group’s “heartland areas” of Liverpool, St Helens and Warrington.
Mr Hepworth said: “Torus Developments has ended the financial year in a position where risks are far more visible and better mitigated than ever before… Further stability in the market and Torus’s development programme are expected in 2025.”
The accounts also show 14 senior staff members at TD received total remuneration of more than £1m during the financial year. The best-paid senior staff member was paid between £130,000 and £140,0000.