of £455m to shareholders by two years. Founder and chairman Tony Pidgley died, after suffering a stroke, in June 2020. Non-executive director Glyn Barker was appointed interim chairman for up to two years until a permanent replacement is identified. Operations Berkeley Homes has built some apartment towers in central London, including the One Blackfriars skyscraper (2014). In smaller operations, it runs urban redevelopment programmes via Berkeley Community Villages and constructs in commercial property via Berkeley Commercial. Another subsidiary, Berkeley First, builds student and key worker accommodation. The operational subsidiaries include Berkeley Homes plc, which plans the largest estates and hires contractors with responsibility for the management of communal areas unless and until taken over by residents' Right to Manage companies. The developer imposes covenants to retain value across homes in its neighbourhoods. Large examples of operations include community facilities with village-sized neighbourhoods which are green-buffered and constructed closes of apartments and houses; for example, a scheme in Bracknell for 750 new homes, a primary school, extra care facility, roads, landscaping and local shops to be constructed on mixed-use land to expand the Warfield suburb, beside the town's computing and headquarters business parks. In London major developments include Wimbledon Hill Park, Kidbrooke Village and Royal Arsenal Riverside in Woolwich. Controversies Flammable cladding Following the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, it emerged that many high rise buildings in the UK had been built with flammable cladding and insulation, and that many developers had not installed required fire hazard mitigation measures. Several Berkeley Group's buildings were reported as having been built without the proper fire measures and some of their buildings have caught fire, such as Richmond House (part of the Hamptons development in Worcester Park, southwest London) in 2019 and Holborough Lakes, in Snodland, Kent in 2017. In the case of Richmond House, Andy Roe, commissioner of the London Fire Brigade (LFB) told a London Assembly committee that the building had been damaged beyond repair "in approximately 11 minutes once the fire had taken hold … entirely due to problems with internal compartmentation and poor standards of construction". Arnold Tarling, a fire safety expert, found similar fire safety problems at other blocks of flats at Berkeley's Hamptons development. “There were large gaps. There was no fire-stopping. And it was packed full of wood fibre...”. LFB's Roe said he uncovered similar defects at other Berkeley developments, including one in Reading and at Holborough