Case Study
Dandara Living
Dandara Living is one of the UK’s largest property developers. The single platform I built runs every one of its websites, and each new launch is a content task instead of an engineering project.
- Role
- Technical Lead
- Tenure
- 2020–2023
- Sector
- Property
- Scope
- Platform, CMS & Design System
- Team
- Led the design & build team
Dandara Living is one of the UK’s largest property developers and a leader in affordable housing, with thousands of homes across the country. Their growing portfolio was outrunning a patchwork of fragmented websites, each new development adding cost, complexity, and maintenance.
I replaced the fragmented sites with a single centralised platform. All 17 development sites now cohabit one CMS and one design system, with various platforms (Zoopla, Rightmove, and MRI property management) tightly integrated. Launching a new development is a content task, not a fresh design and engineering project. The in-house team can now act without developer support. The platform scales with the portfolio rather than against it, and Dandara Living retained me for several years to help manage the expansion and adoption.
With thousands of homes across the UK, Dandara Living is one of the country’s largest developers and a leader in affordable housing. As their portfolio grew, their digital presence wasn’t keeping up.
Jo Orton and Andrew Dudgeon, who led marketing and digital, were feeling the strain. The business had built a strong reputation as a trusted manager of high-quality, affordable homes. But they were managing multiple fragmented websites with no unified system behind them. Each new development meant more complexity, more cost, and more things to maintain. They needed someone who could bring it all under control.
Platform
In property development, it’s common to see a separate website for every development. It’s also common for that approach to become expensive and unmanageable fast.
To resolve their issues, I built a single centralised platform to power all 17 of Dandara Living’s development websites from one management system. Whether a development is in planning, under construction, or fully occupied, the team manages it from the same place, with the same tools. The platform also streamlined the portfolio’s integrations. Property listings stream out to Zoopla and Rightmove, and MRI property management is connected for lead acquisition and tenant relationship management.
This had immediate cost benefits. There was only one system to learn, which cut onboarding time and made the team more efficient. More importantly, launching a new development website became a content task, not an engineering project.
Design
The challenge was maintaining a consistent Dandara Living brand experience without flattening the individuality of each development. My team and I created a flexible design system covering a core digital palette, typographic styles, and a library of more than 160 components (many with several variants) that every page is built from.
Customers always know they’re on a Dandara Living site, even when imagery and local branding vary. Changes made to the design system roll out across all websites at once, eliminating the manual update work that typically compounds as a portfolio grows.
Accessibility was a priority throughout. Every component was built to ensure all users, regardless of ability, can navigate and use the sites.
Modularity
Building rigid digital foundations is a recipe for problems down the road. I focus on flexibility and modularity. It keeps costs down and means the team can adapt to market conditions without waiting on developers.
I built a library of 27 block components that the Dandara Living team uses to assemble pages. With hundreds of millions of possible page variations, the system handles everything from an initial planning application site through to a fully managed, occupied development.
Data collection is critical for property developers, and the needs shift depending on the phase. During planning, it’s about community engagement. During sales and management, it’s about capturing leads. To handle this, I added a drag-and-drop form builder. Specific field types sync with development-level content, so there’s less to maintain and data never goes stale. Conditional logic displays relevant follow-up fields based on what users select, keeping forms tight with no redundant questions.
Impact
Running the digital estate is now simpler and cheaper. One system to learn cut onboarding time, one design system keeps every site on brand, and a content change made once rolls out everywhere it applies.
As Dandara Living continues to expand across the UK, the foundations are already in place — each new development starts from the platform, not from scratch.
- 17
- development sites unified on one platform
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