Lothbury Investment Management is launching a UK residential investment fund and has hired an expert from the US to run it.

Tim Phillips has left construction company The Buzzuto Group to join Lothbury as director and will lead the launch of the Lothbury Combined Residential Investment Fund.

Lothbury said Phillips’ expertise would be used across all of its funds and that his initial task will be to oversee its newly launched specialist fund.

Lothbury has already been active in the residential markets, including developments in central London funded by the £1.29bn (€1.81bn) Lothbury Property Trust. The fund manager has also invested in student accommodation in Glasgow and London.

The announcement comes at a time of growing institutional investor activity in the UK residential market.

The British Property Federation (BPF) also announced it has established a new committee to promote the emerging build-to-rent sector to governments and other stakeholders.

The committee, which will form a sub-set of the BPF’s residential committee, will be chaired by Andrew Stanford, UK residential fund manager at LaSalle Investment Management. Adam Russell, acquisitions manager at FizzyLiving will act as vice chair.

The committee will highlight the role build-to-rent can play in increasing housing supply and tenant choice.

Stanford, the former head of the government’s Private Rented Sector Taskforce, said: “Build-to-rent fits so well with so many of the new government’s priorities, delivering new supply of quality rented homes, accelerating the speed of housing development, making good use of brownfield sites, supporting placemaking and meeting customer needs.

“There are many innovators in this new market and I am so pleased we have brought many of them together, in this new group, to drive that important dialogue with local and national government forward.”