Legal & General has exchanged contracts with the NHS to acquire a 6-acre brownfield site at Lambeth Hospital in south London, where it plans to develop a £350M build-to-rent project of about 700 homes, subject to planning.

The scheme, located between Clapham, Stockwell and Brixton, will be delivered through the Access Development Partnership, L&G’s joint venture with Dutch pension investor PGGM and UK workplace scheme Nest. The acquisition is the partnership’s second in the UK within a year and is part of its strategy to deploy long-term pension capital into large-scale regeneration projects.

Proceeds from the land sale are intended to support a £186M programme by South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust to modernise mental health facilities, including the development of the New Douglas Bennett House at Denmark Hill, which will replace services currently based at Lambeth Hospital.

The master plan aims to deliver a mixed-tenure development comprising both private and affordable homes alongside new public realm and resident amenities. L&G said the completed scheme would include coworking space, a residents’ lounge and a gym and is expected to be all-electric. The development will be operated by L&G on completion as part of its national residential platform.

The Lambeth project is the 26th acquisition in L&G’s build-to-rent portfolio. The group has deployed more than £4B into the UK BTR sector and delivered over 10,000 homes, including 2,000 in London.

“The redevelopment of the Lambeth Hospital site is a flagship example of the power of pension capital to address the chronic lack of housing supply by delivering large scale schemes in the areas that need them most," L&G Head of Housing, Asset Management Dan Batterton said in a statement

"Underpinned by long dated institutional capital, L&G is able to look beyond short term market cycles and commit to multi phase regeneration… we have ambitious plans to accelerate the growth of our housing platform and support the delivery of new homes across the UK.”

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