Keeping up with the conversations | Colin Cole

In the next installment of our regular article following up on our conversations with business leaders across Worcestershire, we chat with Colin Cole the CEO from Lioncourt Homes and find out what’s new:

The housing market has been a little more challenging since we last spoke due to the uncertainties in the wider market. As a consequence my main focus has been to strengthen our balance sheet by reducing our borrowings. We are now in a cash neutral position, with modest borrowings. This contrasts with high borrowing levels when we were growing the business aggressively. This change in strategy means that we are in control of our own destiny, whatever the market throws at us.

Having said that we have grown the business by 13% over the past 12 months, which some companies may consider to be strong growth, in any market. For us it represents modest growth. We are now planning for 15% to 20% growth per annum over the next 5 years, so we are starting to throttle up again!

There has also been a noticeable change in market activity since the General Election. The Election result provided clarity with political direction and also appears to have injected a feel good factor that has been lacking over the past few years. There has been a noticeable increase in both site visitors and reservations during January and February and it is hoped that this will continue throughout 2020.

We have had a number of significant planning wins in recent times. In October we won our planning appeal at Biddenham in Bedfordshire for 249 homes and in December we achieved planning consent on our entire land holding in Kings Hill, Warwickshire for 2,500 new homes together with schools, and sporting facilities. This land is almost a square mile.

4 of our sites have won Top 100 Quality Awards with NHBC, with our other developments only marginally losing out. We have also retained the coveted 5 Star Quality Award with HBF for the sixth successive year. We are one of only a handful of developers throughout the UK to have achieved this status. Our focus on quality of build, quality of design and quality of service remains the major plank of our culture. Lioncourt remains a people business where the strength of the business is driven by everyone who works within it.

We are currently planning for our annual trip to Cheltenham Racecourse in April to celebrate our successes over the past 12 months.

The Inside Football facility in Stroud goes from strength to strength and I still play every Monday and every Friday!

Click here for the original interview and go to for all of our In conversation with features.