Ex-Premier League star has grand designs

A former Premier League footballer is hoping to corner the property market after launching his own eco-friendly timber frame housing business.

The company designs and manufactures self-build kit houses, using a timber frame system comprising injected structural insulated panels (SIPS).

As well as being highly energy efficient and better for the environment, the timber frame houses are faster to build and more cost effective.

“I’ve built up a large property portfolio over the last 25 years, consisting of residential and commercial property built in the traditional way. But this is completely different to anything I’ve done previously and I’m very excited about it. I really love the product and I think there’s massive potential for it going forwards.”

Flitcroft said: “Predominantly we do bespoke projects and in those instances we are helping clients to build their dream homes. But there are any number of ways this system can be applied, even down to beach huts, log cabins and instant extensions.

“Timber frame properties are made in factory conditions so the panels are then brought to the site and erected by crane, which means the speed of build is so much quicker."

“This system is virtually zero carbon and because the houses are so well insulated, we estimate the annual heating cost for a typical four or five bedroom property could be as little as £500 per year.

Orders have already started to flood in to Flitcraft’s head office from as far afield as Scotland and the Isle of Man, and they have even had interest from clients in Switzerland.

“We have four designers and a team of highly trained technical support staff on site who can take a project through from planning to designing the drawings, and then obviously the manufacture of the panels. We’ve got the capacity to put another press line in if we need to going forwards so there’s massive potential here. “We’ve got 25 staff at the moment but we could easily accommodate 50 staff here if we hit our targets going forwards.”