Developer Kier Living has started work on a total of 51 two, three, four and five bedroom homes to be built on old farmland in a village in Bucks.

Senior staff cut the first sods on the site off Risborough Road in Stoke Mandeville to mark the start of the development called Whitehorn Gardens.

“It’s a fantastic site for us due to the variety of homes we are building and where we’re building them,” said Kier’s regional operations boss Jonathan Miller.

“Whitehorn Gardens will be perfect for first time buyers, growing families, young professionals and couples looking to downsize.

“There are some top class schools in the area, Aylesbury is on the doorstep and it’s only ten minutes’ walk from Stoke Mandeville station from where trains get you into London in less than an hour.”

The first homes at Whitehorn Gardens are expected to come on the market in the autumn.

Buyers will have a choice of 11 designs. Help to Buy will be available on some plots. A play area will be included in the landscaping.

Kier is also starting work on a development of two, three, four and five-bedroom properties in Steeple Claydon, 29 minutes drive from Aylesbury, 20 minutes from Bicester and 31 minutes from Milton Keynes.

Meanwhile Wooburn Green based housebuilder CALA Homes has contributed £4m to support a long term improvement in local services and facilities in Haddenham where the company is building 233 three, four and five-bedroom houses on the Aspen Park development.

A brand new retirement home is among the facilities planners hope will widen the appeal of the area for in-comers and the wider community.

Other amenities in the pipeline for Aspen Park include a sports pavilion, sports pitches, tennis courts, a play area and a hectare of open space with a village pond.There’ll also be a new Co-op food store.

CALA’s regional sales and marketing director Gavin Stewart says a lot of thought has gone into providing amenities that will improve the lifestyle for all ages.

To encourage potential buyers to explore local attractions, the builder has bought 100 family tickets for St Tiggywinkles, Haddenham’s famous wildlife hospital where injured animals and birds – not only hedgehogs – are nursed back to health before being released back into the wild.

The free tickets are being handed out to visitors who call into the sales office at Aspen Park.

The marketing suite and three showhomes are open everyday from 11-5.

Current starting price on the Haddenham development is £449,950 for a three bedroom detached house with a garage and private garden.

For those who assume – as we did – that every newly built family sized house is sold with a garden of its own included in the price, no, that’s not safe to assume, not according to the CALA sales representative at Aspen Park on Tuesday this week.

“Funnily enough,” he told us “I was asked that question by a buyer at the weekend.

“I told him, surely every three bedroom house comes with a garden but the purchaser told me, ‘I’ve just come from a development by a different builder and the gardens included in the price of the same sized houses on that site are communal.’”

“Pictured preparing the ground for Kier’s new development in Stoke Mandeville are left to right: head of marketing Caroline Robinson, managing quantity surveyor Keith Akers, regional director Jonathan Miller, managing quantity surveyor Alex Booker and construction director Rob Crossland.