IN Brief:
- Reds10 Developments combines planning, funding, factory manufacture, construction and handover within one residential business.
- Its first Merstham project will deliver 11 affordable homes for Raven Housing Trust to EPC A and operational net-zero standards.
- The expansion takes Reds10’s established industrialised construction model into affordable and social housing development.
Reds10 has launched a dedicated residential development business aimed at delivering affordable housing through a vertically integrated industrialised construction model. Reds10 Developments will combine land, planning, funding, manufacturing and construction within the group, with an initial focus on affordable and social housing.
The business is already on site with Raven Housing Trust in Merstham, Surrey, where it is delivering an 11-home, 100% affordable scheme on a constrained brownfield site. The project comprises two- and three-bedroom family homes and has been designed to achieve EPC A and operational net-zero standards, with solar photovoltaic panels, air-source heat pumps, dedicated battery storage and electric-vehicle charging.
The homes will be manufactured at Reds10’s East Yorkshire facility before being delivered to site under a turnkey arrangement. Rather than operating solely as a modular contractor, Reds10 Developments intends to take responsibility from land and planning through funding, production, site delivery and handover.
Richard Fox has been appointed managing director of Reds10 Developments, with Damon Brown appointed director. The company says the pair bring almost 50 years of experience across development, finance, construction and modular delivery. The business is also working on longer-term partnerships with councils, housing associations, charities and other developers, with several sites identified.
The Merstham scheme gives the new division a live project through which to test the model. Reigate and Banstead Borough Council has granted planning permission, and the brownfield location provides the type of constrained site where factory manufacture can alter the site sequence by moving a larger share of production away from the final plot.
Reds10 has built much of its recent workload around public-sector modern methods of construction, including defence, education, justice and health. Its vertically integrated group now includes specialist companies covering activities from steel fabrication to furniture, fixtures and equipment, supported by manufacturing operations in East Yorkshire. Residential development is intended to become a larger part of its longer-term growth programme.
The expansion follows revenue of £144.7m for the 2024/25 financial year and a reported operating margin of 4.8%. Reds10 has also been adding capabilities around its manufacturing operation, including investment in steel fabrication and a wider group structure intended to support growth in healthcare, affordable housing and temporary accommodation.
The company continues to use high levels of pre-manufactured value on public-sector projects. Construction recently started on its 152-place expansion at HMP Kirklevington Grange, where 181 modules are being used and more than 85% of the accommodation is completed off site.
The residential model introduces different commercial and planning constraints. Affordable housing schemes have to combine land values, funding structures, tenure requirements, planning conditions and local infrastructure with a manufacturing programme that works most efficiently when designs are fixed early and repeated across multiple projects.
Reds10 says the new business will use a common factory-built apartment platform and aggregate demand across partners, allowing standardisation to be applied across a pipeline rather than one project at a time. That approach can reduce the number of contractual interfaces between developer, manufacturer and contractor, while placing more responsibility for development risk within the same organisation.
The Merstham specification indicates how the first schemes will be positioned. EPC A performance, heat pumps, solar generation, battery storage and EV charging are included within the housing offer rather than proposed as later upgrades. Factory manufacture can also make installation sequences more predictable, provided design decisions, services interfaces and procurement are sufficiently advanced before production begins.
At 11 homes, Merstham remains a small first project rather than evidence of volume residential delivery. Its role is to establish a complete route through planning, manufacture, site construction and handover while Reds10 builds the partnerships required for larger schemes. The company says further opportunities are already in its pipeline, including an initial emphasis on apartment projects that can use a common production platform.
The next stage for Reds10 Developments will be replication. Moving from Merstham into a sequence of affordable housing projects using the same development and manufacturing structure would turn an established off-site contracting capability into a broader housing delivery operation. The first scheme is now providing the live test of whether that model can retain its manufacturing efficiencies once land, funding and residential development risk are added to the equation.
