We own land, give us, er... more land!

Spotted by Bob E at Inside Housing:

Kent Council has formed a deal with a developer and an institutional investor to build 152 mixed tenure homes.

The council is providing the development land and will receive funding from contractor Kier Property, which will act as a developer, provide funding and take the scheme through the planning process.(1)

An international pensions investor has been lined up to buy the homes, which will be for private sale, rental and affordable. The affordable housing will then be leased to a housing association which is yet to be selected. The unnamed investor is viewing the scheme as an opportunity to access low-risk regular income from inflation-linked rents...

Nigel Turner, managing director of Kier Property, said: ‘We see this offer as creating a modest scale solution to meeting housing need and we are keen to roll this out with other public and private sector clients.’(2)

Separately, using the same funding model, Kier is ‘reviewing options’ for new homes on land it owns in Ashford – potentially building an additional 108 homes.

1) Am I reading that correctly? The council, which for better or worse is actually in charge of "the planning process", needs a private developer to "take the scheme" through it? Will they be allowing school children to mark their own exams as well?

2) From page 38 of Kier's 2012 Annual Report:

Our land bank at 30 June 2012 is carried at a value of £132m (2011: £159m) and is represented by 4,180 plots (2011: 4,849 plots) all with planning consent.