Dream homes nightmare as McCloud firm debts hit £3m
GRAND Designs host Kevin mcCloud spends his Tv day job watching people transform properties into the homes of their dreams.
however, investors in the eco-housing firm hAB housing that the 62-year-old presenter (pictured) founded have been left thoroughly disgruntled and potentially out of pocket.
For I can reveal the company is now in debt to the tune of almost £3million, up from £2.4million in previously filed accounts in 2019.
mcCloud launched happiness Architecture Beauty (hAB) in 2007 with the — some might now say — ironic slogan ‘to make homes that lift the spirits’, quite the opposite of what investors will surely be feeling when they cast their eyes over the latest set of company accounts.
From 2013 to 2017, mcCloud’s businesses were able to raise money for the scheme by issuing mini-bonds to investors, which effectively worked as IOus. For the first round in 2013, 650 people put a combined £1.9 million into the scheme — a crowdfunding world record at the time.
The second scheme, in 2017 saw hAB Land Ltd, the land acquisition arm of the business, raise a further £2.4 million, where investors were offered an ‘enviable interest rate’ of 8 per cent. Launching the project, mcCloud claimed it would ‘turn housebuilding on its head’ by developing picturesque pieces of architecture which would offer seclusion, privacy and tranquillity. ‘It sounded almost too good to be true and now I know it was,’ one disappointed homeowner in Kings Worthy, hampshire, tells me. ‘We’ve had to make do with living in an unfinished building site.’ mcCloud, resigned as a director of hAB Land Ltd in 2018 and control of the company shifted to a company called BAh restructuring Limited. In October 2019, KPmG was appointed as a liquidator of BAh restructuring Limited and hAB Land Limited. Then in 2020, mcCloud sent an email to hAB housing investors informing them that accountancy firm KPmG was attempting to call in money owed by hAB housing. It read: ‘hAB housing cannot pay and could yet be forced into a formal insolvency process. ‘I am determined that investors should see their investment as not entirely lost.’ A representative for mcCloud says: ‘he’s not able to comment because of due process hAB Land is going through.’