The Scottish house builder has been pushing south in recent years and now operates from around 90 sites in eight regions around the country and are benefitting from this significantly increased presence, particularly in Southern England.

In the first full-year of its new growth strategy revenue jumped 79% to a record £511.6m driven by an increase in both completions to 993 homes and it highest ever private average selling price of £509,000, up from £423,000 previously.

This saw pre-tax profits almost double hitting a record £50.9m.

The jump in performance was helped by the acquisition of Banner Homes at the end of last year, which offered operational efficiencies and overhead savings of £10m.

Alan Brown, Chief Executive of CALA Group, said: “This growth trajectory has led to us continuing our recruitment programme apace, welcoming 169 new members of staff to the business and stepping up our apprenticeship and graduate recruitment initiatives across the Group.

“Our focus now is on driving operational efficiency improvements throughout the group which will in turn flow through to improved operating margins and return on capital employed as we target group revenues of £1bn within the next five years in prime locations across the UK.”

He said that Cala has raised its land buying margin hurdle by 1%, and had a particular focus on Southern England to drive future growth.

The house builder’s owned and contracted landbank jumped 12% to 14,236 plots with a potential gross development value approaching £5.2bn.