Legal & General has started work on building a ‘Net Zero’ retirement community.

The new community, Millfield Green, in Caddington, central Bedfordshire, and will eventually have 200 specialist age-appropriate homes. It will use renewable energy generation through on-site photovoltaics, EV-charging, improved building fabric and insultation, mechanical heat vent recovery units and ground-source heat pumps. The latter will be delivered by Kensa Group, a business Legal & General took a significant stake in last year.

John Bromley, Head of Clean Energy at Legal & General Capital, said: “Today’s news represents Legal & General’s first steps towards enabling all new homes to be operationally net carbon neutral within a decade, reducing the emission of many tonnes of greenhouse gasses, whilst saving customers money and meeting the needs of investors who increasingly focus on sustainable solutions. Being able to bring together our housing platform and our clean energy investments, through the deployment of Kensa’s high efficiency ground-source heat pumps, demonstrates how L&G is taking a holistic approach to Building Back Better from early stage capital investment, through to construction and operation.”

Legal & General announced plans in  2020 to make all its residential accommodation “operationally net-zero” by 2030.