ilke Homes appoints chief operating officer to drive continued growth

Specialist modular house builder ilke Homes has appointed David Scott as chief operating officer to spearhead the company’s continued growth following a record-breaking £100m fundraising round.  

Scott, who will take up the newly-created role, has held senior roles at two FTSE-listed businesses – Tesco and Deliveroo – where he was responsible for scaling up operations and driving efficiencies. 

During his time as operations director at Deliveroo, Scott was responsible for growing the delivery operation from 1,000 orders per day to 100,000 per day. 

In his new role, Scott will be responsible for driving the business towards achieving a profit as it looks to ramp up its annual output to 4,000 homes a year – making it a top 10 house builder. This will include achieving economies of scale across ilke Homes’ manufacturing cycle, which will bring down the costs of creating a home. 

After registering a 150% year-on-year growth in revenue last year, ilke Homes successfully closed a Fortress Investment Group-led fundraising round in December. 

The investment will allow the company to invest heavily in automating more of its manufacturing processes to further drive productivity. This will in turn enable ilke Homes to secure more sites and expand its ‘package deal’ strategy, which offers full development service of land, infrastructure and homes in a rapidly growing market.   

Scott, who was most recently COO at ecommerce business Thread and brings high-tech scale-up experience, joins a leadership team that boasts sector expertise across the aerospace, automotive and rail engineering industries. 

ilke Homes is working with some of the UK’s biggest developers and investors, including global asset manager Man Group, FTSE 250-listed house builder Vistry Group, and housing association Places for People. 

Despite being founded just five years ago, ilke Homes is now delivering over 1,000 homes a year and has secured a pipeline of over 4,000 homes, putting it on par with some of the UK’s biggest house builders. 

In June 2022, ilke Homes launched a world-first partnership with Octopus Energy and Gresham House that is rolling out the UK’s first homes to guarantee residents zero energy bills.   

The three pioneering firms are partnering on a site in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex where ilke Homes is delivering a 153-home scheme. 101 of these homes will be zero-carbon in operation - the most delivered on a single site in the UK - meaning they will generate their own source of energy, helping to drastically reduce emissions produced by utilities such as electricity and heating.  

Branded ZERO bills, the ground-breaking offering, is being launched as part of ilke ZERO - the UK’s first mainstream zero-carbon housing offering which is aiming to drastically cut carbon emissions from housing whilst insulating consumers and taxpayers from the cost-of-living crisis.  

Giles Carter, CEO at ilke Homes, said: “Bringing someone of David’s calibre and capabilities to ilke Homes will help us progress with our long-term strategic vision of growth. The cross-sectoral expertise that our leadership team boasts means we are able to tap into the efficiencies of manufacturing and digital to realise our ambition to become a top 10 house builder.” 

David Scott, COO at ilke Homes, said: “Modular housing is a tremendously exciting sector to be in right now, and ilke Homes’ leading position makes my role all the more compelling. House building, and the techniques used to build homes, has remained unchanged for much of the last century. ilke Homes is pioneering a solution that will not only bring much needed additionality to the sector, but also ensure that our housing stock is fit for a net-zero future.”