UK Construction and Law
Bolton developer signs letter of intent on a £185m northern residential fund with Canadian backer
By Staff Writer | 16 August 2026
Forshaw and AND Capital Ventures plan a closed ended fund of up to £185m for residential led and mixed use schemes across the North of England. The agreement is not binding, and the structure and due diligence are still to be negotiated.
Forshaw Land & Property Group has signed a letter of intent with the Canadian private equity platform AND Capital Ventures to establish a closed ended residential development fund of up to £185m, targeting residential led and mixed use schemes across the North of England.
The division of labour is the conventional one. Forshaw takes responsibility for sourcing sites, development, construction and asset management. AND Capital leads capital raising, investor relations and fund formation. The money is intended to back build to sell, private rented sector and wider regeneration projects, and the developer has said it also wants to move into larger high rise residential schemes and hotels.
The agreement is currently non binding. The parties expect to negotiate the final fund structure and complete due diligence over the coming months before the vehicle is launched.
That sentence is the one to read first, and it is worth saying plainly because announcements of this kind circulate through a supply chain as though the money has arrived. It has not. A letter of intent commits the parties to negotiate, not to fund, and the gap between a signed letter and a first drawdown has swallowed a great many development pipelines.
We have built a strong track record as an SME developer, but access to funding remains one of the biggest challenges facing businesses in our sector.
Lyndon Forshaw, chief executive, Forshaw Land & Property Group
What is already on site
The developer's current work gives a sense of the scale the fund is meant to lift it to. It has a £64.2m residential tower under construction in Manchester, and Riverside Place, a scheme of 814 apartments on Salford Waterfront, is passing through planning.
The chief executive has said the arrangement would let the company increase both the scale and the number of projects it delivers while expanding into new asset classes, from a larger hotel portfolio to more family housing and taller residential buildings.
Why an institutional vehicle changes the contracts
For contractors and consultants working for regional developers, the move from project by project finance to a committed fund changes more than the size of the jobs. It changes who is on the other side of the table. Fund backed employers bring lenders' requirements with them: tighter collateral warranty and third party rights packages, step in rights for the funder, prescribed forms of building contract, longer defects liability positions, and a level of due diligence on the design team's professional indemnity cover that an SME developer does not usually reach for.
Forshaw has spent nearly 20 years building the kind of track record that institutional capital wants to underwrite. Pairing that operating discipline with a dedicated institutional capital vehicle gives us a genuine competitive edge in one of the most sought-after regional markets in Europe.
David Chung, head of capital formation, AND Capital Ventures
None of that is a reason to avoid the work. It is a reason to price the contractual position rather than the turnover, and to look closely at what a fund's standard documents do to payment terms and to the timing of practical completion on a build to sell scheme where the exit depends on units selling.
Whether the fund reaches financial close is a question for the coming months. Until it does, the pipeline it is meant to pay for remains the same pipeline it was a week ago.