Hugo Reeve has always enjoyed the entrepreneurial side of residential development, and it is this enthusiasm for business which he brings to his role as Managing Director of Living Villages Holdings Ltd,

Hugo, 33, who obtained a BA in architecture from Manchester University, dabbled in hotel management and advertising for a few months before returning to his architectural roots to pursue housebuilding..

He said: “I remembered how much housing had fascinated me while I was doing my degree, so I wanted to work for a company that developed good, proper houses but on a commercial basis. I realised developers had much more control over what was built than architects answering to clients, and therefore had the control to build better houses.

“Berkeley Homes were still building good quality, one-off houses in the south east, so I joined them as a land buyer to learn the ropes.

“I found that the process of buying the land meant you have to do the business plan for the whole project right at the outset. This means going through every aspect of the project and co-ordinating all the disciplines, from architects to builders, and then own the resulting business plan and cash-flow. It gives you a fantastic oversight of the whole business.

“By masterminding the business plan, you have the control  to actually make a development  happen, and to make it happen better than the rest. This is what makes me tick.

“I realised it was very entrepreneurial, as you have to create a business and solve problems and do it all up front. It gave me the best grounding when I came to run my own business.”

Four years later, Hugo was headhunted by Countryside Properties plc to start up an office for their Copthorn Homes brand in Ealing, West London..

“Copthorn was the contemporary arm of their business, with a real flare for modern design, but which also specialised in building alongside affordable housing in mixed tenure schemes,” he said. This gave him vital experience in delivering sustainable communities, sustainable both in design and social terms, whilst working alongside housing associations.

“At Countryside, I was working on regeneration projects, some of them involving 2,000 homes of mixed tenure - private and affordable houses. This requires a real responsibility in making sure large-scale new communities will actually work. It’s frightening how easy it is to make the same mistakes they made in the ’60 and ‘70’s, in the drive to reduce costs and make profit.

I realised housebuilding wasn’t just about building houses, but about building communities that actually will work and flourish. This became my passion.

Copthorn won House Builder of the Year at the What House Awards in 2003, and one of Hugo’s projects was cited as a contributor to that award.

Then in 2004, he left Countryside/Copthorn to start his own business, teaming up with Scott Black – a fellow architecture graduate from Manchester University – to form Black Reeve Ltd.

“Our main aim was to start by seeking out opportunities using our land and planning expertise, and just see where the opportunities took us.  We also wanted to build a small property portfolio on the back of it,” he said.

We followed through on enough small opportunities to break profit after 15 months, which is not bad for a new company. This gives you a lot of confidence !

Sure enough, the opportunities led the way to where he is now – Black Reeve were approached to act as consultants for Living Villages 2 years ago, to help them secure new projects.

“I immediately saw a company that was turning the corner in making eco-developments financially viable and profitable, without the aid of grants. They weren’t on a crusade to build the ultimate eco-village whatever the cost, but were looking at it with business heads to see which costs and technologies produced the greatest returns, both in environmental and financial terms.

They realised that designing eco-homes was not just about adding clever and expensive technologies, but more about designing schemes with a real sense of place and community. By shaping a community, people will then start to share resources, like cars and allotments, and take more responsibility for running the place. This community lifestyle can reduce carbon footprints far more than adding many expensive gimmicks.

“It is living in a really special community, so different from mainstream new housing, that made purchasers happy to pay a little more for a Living Villages house, thus covering the extra costs, especially as they will also make major savings on their annual energy bills.”

“I could see this being the way forward for the industry and for new-town regenerations across the UK – it’s very exciting. It has already proven to be very desirable.

Hugo spent more and more time shaping Living Villages as a consultant, and became so involved and convinced that this was a new way forward for UK housing, that he finally joined Living Villages full time as Managing Director and shareholder.

“I thought the Living Villages brand was at a very exciting stage – and had great potential on a larger scale. The concept was about building a community, and you can only do that with at least 30-40 homes grouped together. But the larger the community, the more sustainable it can become, so we want to expand the concept to communities of a few hundred homes.”

“Everyone is jumping on the ‘green’ bandwagon, but a new community will not be sustainable by just being green. It is equally about social and affordable sustainability, and designing an environment that encourages neighbourliness – a ‘sense of community’ if you like. A community needs to have all these aspects to be truly sustainable.

“So our Living Villages developments have to be a three-way mix of community place making, low energy houses, and affordable housing – and design is a vital part of this.

“For example, by directing the houses towards the sun, with larger windows, you produce much solar gain to help heat the house, but this also helps form the layout and architecture of the whole village.

“Affordability is the biggest challenge, as without grants or government subsidies, producing a low energy house at an affordable cost is pretty hard. However, there is much that can be afforded by just using good design, and as technologies fall in price we are improving on this all the time. We now have affordable houses planned for our last phase of our Wintles development in Shropshire.

“We are taking an holistic approach to how a community is going to work – such as growing vegetables, burning wood, and sharing cars – so people can live together in a more environmentally friendly way without sacrificing creature-comforts and modern lifestyles. And, most importantly, they must enjoy it !.

We almost need to re-find that traditional British community spirit that has been lost over the last 50 years, and re-invent it for a more modern era. ”

He said Living Villages were already working on joint ventures with other developers, housing associations, and land owners, all of whom see the advantages of Living Villages’ different approach to mainstream house-builders.

“Other developers have also seen the edge we can add to their developments, not only to help them secure planning permission with a more exemplar scheme, but also to give a marketing edge that helps improve values, especially in a regeneration area.” he said.

Over the course of 2006, he helped found Living Villages Holdings as a new vehicle to expand the concept across the UK, and was the driving force in raising city finance to fund this. In March 2007, they successfully sold a stake in the business to the AIM listed fund, Low Carbon Accelerator, thus raising the funds for major expansion.

“My role is to now run the business and expand it with major new projects. Having been the driving force that has pulled Living Villages Holdings together and made it happen, my fellow partners often call me ‘The Glue’!

“The business is already at the forefront of the government’s drive for new low-energy communities, and my aim is for Living Villages to show by example a better way forward for mainstream housebuilding, one of building real sustainable communities for the future, not boxes from the past.”

Hugo, who is married with a 1 year old son, lives in Shepherds Bush, West London.