Emma Davies and Tom Aram AtkinsRéalis and Mark Powell, EDAROTH, explore the government’s 1.5m new homes target and the challenges facing delivery
Following the recent publication of PAGABO’s report on the Government’s target of building 1.5 million new homes, AtkinsRéalis’s housing sector experts consider what it will take to deliver on the pledge.
The UK government’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes is the subject of much scrutiny, but just as important is the method by which those new homes will be delivered.
The Government and Homes England have made significant moves this year to revive the housing sector, with £39bn committed in the Social & Affordable Housing Programme, the creation of the National Housing and Development Fund and the National Housing Bank, all designed to be catalysts for turning ambition into delivery at pace.
However, relying on the same delivery models, locations, and supply chains risks falling short, because delivering the number of homes needed at that scale requires not one solution but a coordinated system of solutions.
For instance, the New Towns programme has been launched to deliver a significant number of new homes. But we also need to think about how town centre regeneration, retrofitting, and a more ambitious social housing sector can meet the UK’s housing challenge simultaneously.
Town and city centre regeneration
Towns and cities give us the opportunity to deliver improved employment and housing opportunities, which are intrinsically linked to economic growth and together deliver enhanced results.
In a recent study by the Centre for Cities, between 2013 and 2023, disposable income for residents of selected top-performing towns and cities rose by an average of 5.2%, compared with 2.4% for urban areas in the UK overall. This growth was driven by improved employment opportunities, which subsequently positively impacted the local housing market.
Moreover, medium-scale regeneration schemes of 200 to 300 homes are repeatable, scalable and rooted in existing communities. They come with built-in advantages as transport connections already exist, social infrastructure is in place, and jobs are often nearby.
Crucially, they strengthen the link between housing and economic growth, as when people live closer to opportunity, local economies thrive, and housing becomes part of a virtuous cycle.
If we, as an industry, are serious about delivering at scale, we need hundreds of these schemes running in parallel across the country, but regeneration alone will not close the gap. Meeting the UK’s housing challenge means changing how new homes are delivered.
Social and affordable housing
Relying on established delivery models alone has not been enough to produce the volume of social and affordable homes needed. If supply is to increase, there needs to be a greater focus on homes that would not otherwise be delivered without intervention in the way land, risk, funding, and delivery are structured.
Unlocking scalable SMEs and industrialised approaches, as exemplified by social and affordable housing developer EDAROTH, must play a crucial role in creating additionality in the delivery of new homes.
They form a critical but under-utilised part of the housing supply chain, frequently constrained by access to land, finance and a consistent pipeline.
Providing access to commercially viable sites at scale, alongside clear development and procurement frameworks, will enable them to scale operations and expand delivery. In fact, procurement frameworks, such as Pagabo development-led frameworks, are a really important factor in creating repeatable models for housing delivery that can be used by metro mayors, housing associations and local authorities in their procurement.
This diversification will increase output, resilience and competition, creating homes that will not otherwise be delivered through traditional volume-led models alone.
The prize is not just more homes, but a more resilient system. A diversified supply chain is less vulnerable to shocks, more competitive, and better able to respond to demand.
But while there is rightly a focus on new build homes, there are also millions of existing homes that are underperforming, under-occupied or, in some cases, uninhabitable.
Retrofit for new homes
For a long time, retrofit has been viewed through the lens of carbon reduction or fuel poverty when it could also be viewed as a supply question.
Britain’s existing urban fabric is full of underused assets such as redundant retail, surplus public land, stalled brownfield sites, etc., that could be part of the mix and deliver homes quickly and sustainably.
Not every property can or should be saved, but many can be brought back into use, upgraded or repurposed, while others could be replaced intelligently, with net gains in both quality and quantity.
A coherent housing strategy would treat the existing stock as part of the pipeline, but at present, the system is too fragmented. Data on housing conditions is inconsistent, making it difficult to plan at scale, and the economics remain challenging, particularly for harder-to-treat properties. The result is a reactive approach that fixes the worst problems rather than systematically improving the whole stock.
Retrofit, regeneration, and new build should not be kept in separate policy silos, as they are interdependent. Infrastructure investment, for example, should be aligned with both new developments and existing communities. Funding mechanisms should recognise whole-life value, not just upfront costs. And local authorities should be empowered with the data and tools to plan across all three fronts at once.
Because ultimately the question is not which approach is “the answer” but actually how do we combine them?
Town centre regeneration can deliver quick, sustainable wins at scale, anchoring housing growth in places with existing economic potential. A more ambitious, better-supported social housing sector can drive additionality, expanding capacity and accelerating delivery. And a reframed retrofit agenda can unlock value from the homes we already have, improving quality while contributing to supply.
Together, these approaches form a single system which is more balanced, more resilient and more realistic about the complexity of the challenge. The reality is that Britain does not need one housing strategy; it needs many that work as one.
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