Kevin McCloud: Grand Designs star's eco-housing scheme goes into liquidation with investors losing £2.4million

According to a report shared in The Sun, the eco-housing company called Happiness Architecture Beauty (HAB) Land run by McCloud has gone bust. The Channel 4 presenter set up HAB Housing in 2007 “to challenge the way identikit volume housing was built in the UK”, with HAB Land being established in 2014, with projects planned in Winchester and Oxford.

HAB finance which raised money for the projects through investment was set up two years later and went bust in 2019.

HAB Land attracted 280 investors, who were promised returns of nine per cent, but will now each lose between £1,000 and £210,000, totalling to an estimated £2.4m.

McCloud quit as a director of HAB Land in 2018 and was reportedly owed £52,613. Speaking at the time he said: “I am saddened to hear about the liquidation outcome of HAB Land. As a significant investor myself, I understand how difficult this news is for all the HAB Land investors to receive."

In 2020, McCloud revealed that the housing scheme HAB Housing was also at risk of being forced into insolvency. At the time in an email to HAB housing investors he revealed that HAB Housing owed £1.2m to HAB Land, and that HAB Land’s liquidators at the accountancy firm KPMG had attempted to call in this loan. According to the Guardian in an email he wrote: “I am determined that investors should see their investment as not entirely lost.”

Sarah McCann is a Trends Writer for NationalWorld. If you liked this article you can follow Sarah on X (Twitter) here. You can also sign up to her free weekly column in the NationalWorld newsletter bringing you the latest tv and film news every Thursday.