The firm also revealed it is advanced talks with tenants for the first two office projects at its £1.3bn International Quarter commercial district in Stratford, east London.
Planning is expected to be submitted in a matter of weeks for what will be the first office element of the scheme, where work on 333 homes is well under construction.
This morning Lend Lease reported that construction turnover for the European business, consisting mostly of UK activities, rose 24% to £314m in the six months to the end of 2014.
The uplift helped to deliver a construction pre-tax profit of £6.8m, after a £9.4m loss in the first half a year before.
Lend Lease’s construction performance was boosted by Lancashire County Council and Blackpool Borough Council taking over ownership of the 25-year Global Renewables Project waste PFI.
The construction arm held a stake in the PFI after building two mechanical biological treatment plants at Thornton, near Blackpool and Farington, near Preston for £90m.
Lend Lease’s European division performance, which also includes property and infrastructure development, saw pre-tax profits jump from £4.1mm to £38m in the period on sales up 3% to £348m.
Residential pre-sales rose over 300% to £560m driven by strong progress at Elephant & Castle, Wandsworth and The International Quarter
Dan Labbad, CEO of international operations, said: “London-based urban regeneration sites will be a key driver of earnings in the next few years.
“At Elephant & Castle we currently have three stages or around 900 homes in delivery and have received planning approval for the next stage West Grove at Elephant park which will add further 593 homes to production schedule.
“We are also close to announcing a partnership with one of the UK’s leading housing associations for the progressive acquisition and management of a further 550 affordable homes at the site.
At the International Quarter scheme in Stratford, where Lend Lease is in a 50:50 joint venture with London Continental Railways, the first two office projects are due to be submitted for planning.
Construction of the first phase of 333 homes started nine months ago at Glasshouse Gardens.
Labbad said: “We are negotiating heads of terms with the Financial Conduct Authority to occupy our first commercial building at the site and another tenant for second commercial building.”
He said the new financial quarter scheme would ultimately deliver 370,00 sq m of commercial office space (above) and was set to become London’s newest financial centre with first tenants moving in within 2018.
Lend Lease is also set to submit revised planning for The Wharves Deptford south London scheme, which was acquired last August.
Labbad said the UK business was set for strong growth as the firm looked forward to moving ahead with several large projects where it is preferred bidder.
He said: “UK contracting market is a tough operating environment mainly coming out of the global financial crisis and the way work was won during that period for high risk work at very low margins.
“We stopped bidding at very low margin work and that meant the revenues in the business dropped over those years.
“What we are seeing now is that clients are looking for contractors that can stand the test of time.
“Our backlog is increasing and we are preferred on a number of positions at the moment in a two-stage process so we expect that backlog to increase further in the next 12 months.”
