Staff overheads, continuing start-up costs and the impact of Covid saw the firm suffer a total loss including interest on loans of £41m in the year to March 2021. This was on sales of just £28m, 42% of which came from land deals.

During the year Ilke Homes installed 199 homes, up by just over a third over the previous year.

Post-year end Ilke Homes raised £60m to keep the firm on track as it continued to set a goal of growing into a top 10 house builder within the next five years, delivering 10,000 factory-built homes.

The fundraise was split between £30m debt from government agency Homes England and £30m of equity from multiple new investors.

Affordable housing provider, The Guinness Partnership, is one of the new equity investors. It is also a customer of Ilke Homes having signed two deals in the last year for sites that will deliver 250 factory-built homes.

Ilke’s main investor TDR Capita has also injected further equity, supported by Middleton Enterprises and private equity firm Sun Capital taking equity stakes.

The £30m debt facility from Homes England’s Home Building Fund comes after the Government’s housing agency invested an initial £30m into Ilke Homes back in 2019.

This handout marked the first time the agency had ever directly invested to boost an offsite manufacturer’s production capacity.

Giles Carter, chief executive of Ilke Homes, said: “As a result of this unprecedented interruption to the markets and operations of the business, the group’s progress in achieiving the business of scale that will drive manufacturing efficiencies and a recovery in overhead has been delayed.

“The group recognised an operating loss in the year of £37.2m (loss 2020: £32.5m).

“The scale of our new business pipeline is such that the group expects to achieve a positive EBITDA trajectory during the next financial year.”

Since the end of 2021’s financial year, ilke Homes has achieved a contracted order book that exceeds £300m and a total pipeline of over 3,000 homes.