{"id":645662,"date":"2026-06-18T17:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-18T17:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/645662\/"},"modified":"2026-06-18T17:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T17:12:10","slug":"major-devon-housebuilder-on-brink-of-administration-launches-10-day-rescue-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/645662\/","title":{"rendered":"Major Devon housebuilder on brink of administration launches 10-day rescue bid"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Devon-based housebuilder appears to be seeking a last-ditch rescue attempt after launching an effort to hire administrators.<\/p>\n

Devonshire Homes Limited has lodged a Notice of Intention to appoint an administrator, a formal document that essentially gives it 10 business days to find a way to save itself.<\/p>\n

The move means that it doesn\u2019t have to pay creditors for that 10-day period while it seeks a solution, which could involve securing external investment or selling assets to raise cash.<\/p>\n

Devonshire Homes, which lists Ilfracombe<\/a>, Bideford<\/a>, Yelland and Bovey Tracey as locations of its current sites in Devon, suffered financial losses in its most recent accounts having secured more than \u00a31.2m in pre-tax profits the prior year.<\/p>\n

A major issue was caused by a costly foray into trying to build a type of home \u201coutside its core strategy\u201d.<\/p>\n

The development in question was already partly built and split into two locations when Devonshire Homes purchased it, but it had a high proportion of timber frame, architect-designed, bespoke houses.<\/p>\n

\"Longstone<\/p>\n

Longstone Cross in Bovey Tracey was built by Devonshire Homes, which has applied to appoint administrators.(Image: Google Maps)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe group had not built such houses before and significantly underestimated the build costs to build the designs,\u201d the accounts for parent company London & Devonshire Trust Limited state.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis resulted in the site making a loss and the group considers that the site is a one-off and such sites will never be purchased again where the group does not utilise its own house types.\u201d<\/p>\n

It added that this loss would be \u201cexceptional\u201d and so didn\u2019t intend repeating the error.<\/p>\n

The mistake accounted for just over \u00a31.2 million in so-called exceptional items, weighing on profits at the company, which also has development sites in Wincanton, in Somerset, and Mabe and Penzance, in Cornwall.<\/p>\n

Beyond this, the company said in its accounts, which cover the year to 30 September 2024, that it was reliant on a covenant breach being waived by Lloyds Bank in December 2025. Because the accounts were filed before that date, it is not clear what happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe waiver is subject to the bank being satisfied the directors have taken the appropriate actions to rightsize the business and that satisfactory trading performance is achieved,\u201d the accounts stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhilst the directors are confident in achieving this, the waiver being granted is not guaranteed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former Conservative MP for Wells, in Somerset, David Heathcoat-Amory, is now a non-executive director according to Devonshire Homes\u2019 website, but was listed as chairman on the accounts that were published in October last year.<\/p>\n

The Notice of Intent was filed on 17 June 2026, and the case is listed as active but no documents have yet been attached to the entry.<\/p>\n

Devonshire Homes has been contacted for comment but had not responded at the time of publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Devon-based housebuilder appears to be seeking a last-ditch rescue attempt after launching an effort to hire administrators.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[44896,190830,84,59,4658,39062,229,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-645662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-bideford","tag-bovey-tracey","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-housing","tag-ilfracombe","tag-politics","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}