How this housebuilder found the magic formula for growth
The challenges for the housebuilding sector are as substantial as they have ever been, but family firm Freeman Homes is charting a course to growth and creating jobs. We asked it 'how?'.
Dear readers,
We hope you had a great week.
Please accept my apologies for the late send of this edition. Regulars will know it usually goes out on a Friday. They will also know that we regularly paywall the main article on our Friday editions to give value to our paying subscribers who help make everything this community interest company does possible. And today is one of those, although as usual we drop the paywall part way down the big read to give everyone a flavour of what it’s all about.
That ‘big read’ is the result of an interview we had the pleasure of doing with the founder and Freeman Homes, one of Gloucestershire’s unsung construction firms (and part of the MF Freeman Group) - a family business that’s been quietly growing for the last couple of decades.
We cover-off some of the biggest challenges currently faced by construction firms - and the irony that some of those challenges seem to have been laid across the tracks by the very Government that has made such a big deal out of helping drive the sector forward.
If you’re a business currently wrestling with the potential impact of changes to inheritance tax, care about our local economies, job prospects, our nation’s affordable housing stock, how many homes we build, what quality they are, and if your blood pressure goes skyward at the mere mention of Section 106, this article tackles it all and more.
What is both fascinating and inspiring is that despite all that, this is a business with the confidence to talk about job creation and growth, and generous enough to reveal how it has developed the incredible business acumen that is helping it look to the future with such confidence and positivity (step forward another increasingly influential Gloucestershire firm).
A very special thanks to Luke Freeman, group CEO and founder of Freeman Homes, and Hayley Coombs, the Forest of Dean firm’s sales and operations director.
Best regards,
Andrew Merrell (editor).
For every person you refer to The Raikes Journal’s email service you get points towards a free membership allowing you to see beyond our paywalls. Please do sign up (free or otherwise), send the referral link to a friend or colleague, and help us grow.
New chair of the Forest Economic Partnership
The business group that represents the Forest of Dean and seeks to promote its economic potential has elected a new leader, naming one of the district's most high-profile businesswomen.
In a piece that we think sits well with the main construction-themed article below, the Forest Economic Partnership (FEP) has named Nicola Bird as its new chairwoman. Bird, founder of AccXel Construction School and also currently chief operating officer at Cinderford-headquartered construction firm KW Bell Group, takes over from the long-serving, outgoing chairman Neil Ricketts. More here.
Here’s a link to a Big Interview we did with Bird back in 2024 too: The woman shaping a new era in construction.
Briefing notes…
🎶🥳 A music festival that started in Stroud has been granted permission to run over three days on a new Gloucestershire venue later this year. Planners have given permission for county-based Monkey Bar Events Ltd to stage a three-day event near Churchdown on the site previously used by Witcombe Festival. The Sunflowers Festival will raise money for Five Valleys-based charity Sunflowers Suicide Support.
🍽️🍷🎵 A new tapas bar where people can “enjoy good food and a nice bottle of wine” will soon open close to Cheltenham town centre. Licensing chiefs have approved Aaron Maximen’s plans for Jebou in Montpellier, just up from No 131 and The Queen’s Hotel, to serve alcohol, play live and recorded music and provide late-night food. More here.
🥇🎉Being trusted by your customers is the Holy Grail for many firms, but Ecclesiastical has pushed the bar even higher - it’s been named the most trusted home insurance provider for the whole of the UK. And not the first time either. The Gloucestershire-headquartered firm has retained its top spot in the Fairer Finance Home Insurance league table for a record twenty-first time. It topped the list of 48 insurers in a list including Bank of Scotland, TSB, NFU Mutual, Lloyds Bank and Nationwide. More here.
🎶🍻 A Stroud bar owner is pushing to extend its opening hours past 11pm to 1am, but he faces objections from residents who fear ‘a late night party venue’ in the making. Adam McVay’s bar is already granted a licence to sell alcohol for consumption on and off the premises at 11 Lansdown seven days a week in October 2024, but now he wants to extend that until 1.30am on Fridays and Saturdays. More here.
Ideas for the weekend…
Saturday…
🛍️ There’s a pop-up market in Westgate Street in the centre of Gloucester, from 10am to 4pm today. Staged by Gloucester BID (Business Improvement District).
👚👗👞👟 Pick up a bargain at what’s billed as Cheltenham’s BIGGEST Vintage Kilo Sale at Unit 1, The Bramery Business Park, Alstone Lane, Cheltenham, GL51 8HE. £20 will get you a kilo of clothes. From 11am to 3pm. More here.
Sunday…
🎶 Welsh legends the Tredegar Town Band will lift the roof of The Sub Rooms in Stroud from 3pm. Tickets are £15 to £17. More here.
Diary dates extra…
We wanted to flag this webinar in case you missed it so far - and because you need to register (it’s on 12 June). If you have overseas staff, the event is for you. Klára Grmelová from the employment law and business immigration team at Willans solicitors, will update on ‘sponsor licence essentials for employers’, cover the latest changes in UKVI guidance, discuss the impacts this may have on your organisation and what you need to know when employing non-UK workers. It’s aimed at directors (CEO, MD, FD), business owners, HR professionals and in-house legal advisors. From 10am to 11.30am. Register here.
* The Raikes Journal is a digital magazine and community interest company whose supporters believe, like us, that journalism about Gloucestershire is worth keeping alive. Everything you read here - original stories about our county - is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College, Merrell People and Randall & Payne; our sponsors, Founding Members and wonderful paying subscribers.
If you upgrade to paid you’ll be part of this CIC too. We’re dedicated to championing the county, its businesses, charities, education and training providers, and to creating an even stronger community. If you upgrade to paid you’ll be able to see past the paywalls often put on our 2cnd and 3rd email editions of the week, that lock our archive after two weeks and our Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series. You’ll be able to comment on our stories too.
You can sign up for just £2.30 a week - or £1.80 a week if two or more people sign up at once. Or go all in and become one of our Founding Partners or Founding Members!
Has this housebuilder found a magic formula for growth
The challenges for the housebuilding sector are as substantial as they have ever been, but family firm Freeman Homes is charting a course to growth and creating jobs. We asked it 'how?'.
By Andrew Merrell.
A conversation with Luke Freeman and Hayley Coombs of Freeman Homes soon makes you realise the scale of the challenges facing the UK house-building sector - and why there is every reason to have hope too.
There is plenty that is not fit for purpose and that stands in the way of the Government’s pledge to build more and faster.
But when our conversation draws to a close this journalist was not just feeling decidedly upbeat but inspired and even just a little in awe.
For ambition reigns at the Forest of Dean-headquartered business.
Despite the immense frustrations with the current situation with S106 bids for affordable housing, the under resourced planning system and not least the recent Government IHT tax policy changes, growth is being cultivated and more jobs are predicted.
But it is those tax changes, announced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves in her Autumn Budget that the conversation focused on first, and with good reason.
We’re not talking about the increases in National Insurance or the minimum wage, it is the new rules around inheritance tax (IHT) that are most troubling Freeman, the second generation to lead a family business.
That business was founded in 1966 by his parents, Mervyn and Jenny Freeman as a plant hire company, with Luke joining in 1996 and founding Freeman Homes in 1999. He’s now chief executive officer of a group of companies (MF Freeman Group) that includes plant hire, contracting, housebuilding and property.
Business relief on IHT currently lets owners pass down qualifying business assets with up to 100 per cent relief, allowing family members to inherit businesses without a hefty tax bill.
From April 2026, the rules are set to change, and Freeman believes they could be devastating, and a bad fit for a Government that says it wants to raise more money by encouraging business growth.
He’s not alone. Neil Davy, chief executive officer of Family Business UK, called the measures “yet another burden heaped on Britain’s 4.8 million family-owned businesses, and removes entirely any incentive for starting or running a family business”.
Davy’s organisation predicts the measures will deliver a £29 billion cut in economic activity and result in 391,000 jobs lost as firms are sold and merged into bigger corporations.
“These changes effectively seize 20 per cent of the capital of private trading companies, saddling them with tax bills that, in most circumstances, cannot be met without selling the underlying business,” he said.
“This change will see a steady succession of family business sold or their underlying assets broken up to satisfy these ill-thought-out policy changes.”
Freeman under no illusions that the Government should be lobbied hard, arguing that a disappearance of family firms will impact jobs, local economies, innovation, the variety of homes built in sectors, and destroy an otherwise solid tax-paying sector in the process.
“It is like biting the hand that feeds you. Many of these firms, like ours, are in it for the long term. This makes them vulnerable to thoughts of a sell-out to private equity firms.
“Such businesses don’t generally look long-term. Family firms are often respected, profitable businesses and provide stable revenue for the Government too,” said Freeman.
Despite the conversation opener, Freeman is otherwise upbeat - and goes on to explain why his company remains resilient when the sector generally is in decline, and he name-checks the firm that has helped Freeman Homes develop the business acumen that is helping drive it not just survive, but thrive.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Raikes Journal to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.