Eatonfield PLC: A decade of property development

Source: Stock Market Digital

Date :14/12/2007 09:18:36

Since floating on the AIM market in last year, Eatonfield has reengineered its processes and strategy to reflect its ethos as a socially responsible employer, housebuilder and commercial developer.

Written by John O’Hanlon and produced by Kiron Chavda

Rob Lloyd founded Eatonfield in 1998, after a 24 year career in the property industry culminated in his appointment in 1997 as Managing Director of the Manchester property developers UK Land. He came out of that company with some equity, he says, and a strong desire to create a company on his own account, trading in land, adding value and finding sites as he had been in the past: “But I wanted to follow a more diverse strategy involving residential, retail and commercial developments, and build an integrated team around me.” This vision has been largely realised over the intervening nine years, especially since its successful flotation on the AIM market, which raised £15 million.

With its headquarters in Mold, Flintshire, Eatonfield has naturally enough focused most of its land acquisition and development in Wales and the North-West of England; however it is now moving into other areas. Until recently Eatonfield tended to move into selected pockets of Wales, such as Cardiganshire, buying sites that were in-between. Maybe too small for the really large national housebuilders but too large for the local builders to handle.

This was a niche that the company’s housebuilding team could make its own, though Lloyd does not underestimate the problems, especially when it comes to planning. “It takes a long time to get planning permission: where you used to reckon around six months from submission to a decision it can now take up to two years for all the flood zone research, traffic management planning, ground contamination reports…

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