Contractor and homebuilder Hill Holdings has tabled more than a billion pounds in turnover despite uncertainty over fire-safety remediation and problems with the planning system.
The contractor’s uplift in activity generated £1.1bn in the 15 months to 31 March 2024, while the previous set of accounts, for 12 months (up to December 2022), recorded a turnover of £716.1m. This equates to a rise of 23 per cent on a monthly basis.
Included in the latest announcement was a pre-tax profit of £70.1m for the 15-month period; in the prior financial year, the figure was £65.6m. This amounts to a fall of 17 per cent when recalculated on a 12-month basis.
Cash was up from £131.9m to £156.4m.
But the firm also revealed “several challenges” it faced during the 15-month period, which also impacted on homebuilders throughout the industry, including high inflation.
“The planning system remains problematic, and uncertainty over the government’s guidance on fire safety resulted in a number [of] commencement delays on schemes across our operating area, particularly in London,” it said. Those all caused demand for new homes to slow, according to Hill.
The company is one of 55 developers to have signed the government’s cladding remediation contract, put in place in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017, which killed 72 people. In its accounts, the group put aside £8.3m worth of provisions to deal with “combustible materials, fire risks and protection and regulatory compliance” around the Building Safety Act. In total, it tabled provisions of £19.7m to cover any future building defects.
But it said the easing of cost pressures over recent months had helped to push up margins.
Looking ahead, the firm forecast a contracting pipeline of £3.7bn, compared with a £2.1bn total in 2022, and a development pipeline of £10bn, up on the £6.7bn figure reported last time.
Hill said it expected cost pressures to ease further. “With higher demand for private homes enabling some upward movement in house prices, we anticipate that our margins will improve over the remainder of our current business plan period and into the next,” it stated in its accounts.
