housing Development and Regeneration In Practice
A selection of the work that sits behind the practice. Each engagement below is drawn from direct experience across UK housing development, regeneration, and acquisition. They illustrate how we work, the problems we are built to solve, and what good outcomes look like in practice.
INCREASING SUPPLY OF Emergency Accommodation
Homelessness Prevention & Housing Finance | HRA Capital Programme | Homelessness Legislation | Capital Restructuring | Equalities Impact Assessment | Multi-Stage Governance
Context
A south coast unitary authority was facing an unsustainable level of expenditure on nightly-paid emergency accommodation as homelessness presentations continued to rise. The authority had a statutory duty to house eligible households, but the volume of families in nightly-paid accommodation had reached a point where costs were escalating rapidly and the six-week legal limit on B&B use for families was creating recurring compliance risk. An acquisition programme was identified as the most effective route to building a sustainable, council-owned emergency accommodation stock.
Challenge
An initial capital approval of £3 million for the acquisition programme, through the Housing Revenue Account. Acquisitions needed to be made quickly and suit the needs of the client group. The budget was further squeezed by the fact that these purchases would attract Stamp Duty Land Tax due to the budget coming from the council itself rather than using any grant input. Flats were preferred to houses, but this brought the complication that they would need to be in blocks already owned by the council to avoid the complications of introducing a management company into play.
Approach
Having established the challenges of the programme, I worked with both the leasehold management team and local estate agents to identify purchase opportunities in mid-rise council-owned blocks. The council was therefore acquiring stock types it was familiar with, which helped manage overall void work costs in comparison to purchasing individual houses. Working with the council's in-house legal team also saved time and money, as they were working on properties they were familiar with, reducing the number and scope of searches required. I established a core group of consultees to streamline the internal processes required, and built upon approaches already established as part of a separate Right to Buy purchase programme.
outcome
Fresh approval for £3 million of HRA capital borrowing was secured at Cabinet level, enabling the acquisition programme to proceed. Properties acquired would generate rental income for the HRA, partially offsetting borrowing costs, while delivering a sustained reduction in nightly-paid accommodation expenditure.
capabilities demonstrated
HRA capital programme structuring
Homelessness legislation and statutory compliance
Equalities impact assessment
Multi-stage governance navigation
Building a Multi-Strand Acquisition Programme
Housing Finance & Capital Strategy | Right to Buy Compliance | Government Grant Strategy | Investment Planning | Financial Modelling | Governance Navigation
context
A south coast unitary authority was under acute and accelerating housing pressure. Homelessness approaches had increased by over 60% in six years, demand for emergency accommodation had risen by a similar margin, and the housing register stood at more than 8,000 households. The authority was spending heavily on nightly-paid temporary accommodation that was costly, poor quality, and legally time-limited for families, while simultaneously holding accumulated Right to Buy receipts that were approaching a government-imposed expenditure deadline. In parallel, the authority had secured a national government capital grant designed to fund higher-quality temporary and resettlement accommodation, with its own match-funding conditions and delivery deadline.
challenge
Two funding routes, two deadlines, and one underlying problem. The authority held approximately £5 million in pooled Right to Buy receipts at risk of forfeiture to central government, with interest, if not deployed within the financial year. The task was to design a legally compliant, politically deliverable acquisition programme that could absorb the receipts at pace, navigating recently introduced government flexibilities that temporarily permitted receipts to fund 100% of acquisition costs, and to secure approval from both Cabinet within a tight governance timetable.
Once that programme was underway, a second and connected challenge emerged. The authority had been awarded a capital grant of approximately £500,000 through a different national programme (Local Authority Housing Fund), but its conditions required substantial match funding before any properties could be acquired, against a hard delivery deadline. A revised funding route was required, with Cabinet approval needed at pace to protect the grant and meet programme timescales, building on the governance and delivery approach already established for the Right to Buy programme.
approach
For the Right to Buy strand, I mapped the scope of the new government flexibilities and translated them into a clear set of guiding principles for the pilot programme. I worked with the finance team on the financial modelling that made the case for action, including the cost of inaction if receipts were forfeited, and prepared the equalities and safety impact assessment, documenting the human cost of the status quo for households in emergency accommodation. I designed the delegated authority structure to allow officers to move quickly on viable acquisition opportunities without returning to Cabinet for each transaction, and progressed the paper through a formal Cabinet governance process.
For the grant-funded strand, I built directly on that established structure. The Cabinet paper set out the rationale for a further set of property acquisitions, three for temporary accommodation use and one for a resettlement family, along with the full funding structure, programme timeline, and a delegated authority framework enabling officers to act efficiently on acquisition opportunities. The proposal was aligned to the authority's wider homelessness prevention programme to strengthen the strategic case, and secured approval at pace to protect the grant against its delivery deadline.
Outcome
Across both strands, the authority deployed a combined investment of more than £6 million and delivered 27 additional homes. The pilot Right to Buy programme delivered 23 homes, an entire new-build block of 17 flats, 3 bungalows aimed at attracting older under-occupiers out of larger council houses, and 3 further second-hand houses, generating estimated annual savings elsewhere in the housing stock of around £650,000 through reduced use of nightly-paid accommodation. The grant-funded strand added a further 4 properties within its programme deadline, securing Cabinet approval for approximately £625,000 of HRA borrowing to match the government grant, a combined investment on that strand of just over £1.1 million. The authority avoided a significant interest penalty on unspent Right to Buy receipts, met its obligations under the government's resettlement programme, and went on to run two further, larger phases of Right to Buy acquisition requiring Cabinet and Council approval.
capabilities demonstrated
Right to Buy compliance and subsidy frameworks
Government grant strategy and programme management
Housing finance and HRA compliance
Financial modelling and business case development
Equalities impact assessment
Governance navigation across multiple, sequenced funding strands
Developing Extra Care Housing
Specialist Housing Strategy | Extra Care Scheme Development | Multi-Agency Partnership | Development Procurement | Stakeholder Engagement
context
Extra Care housing sits at the intersection of housing, health, and social care policy, and demand for it consistently outpaces supply. Over an extended period, I worked with multiple councils and registered providers at various stages of Extra Care development, from strategic feasibility through to procurement, pre-contract negotiation, community engagement, and on-site delivery. Clients ranged from unitary authorities seeking to meet identified older-person housing need to registered providers developing campus-style specialist schemes.
challenge
Extra Care schemes are complex to develop. Multi-agency funding, typically drawing on housing, health, and social care budgets, requires careful structuring. Specialist planning requirements differ from conventional housing, and procurement must reflect the unique blend of housing management and care provision the finished scheme will require. For clients at feasibility stage, the task was building an evidence-based case for delivery and identifying the right model for local conditions. For clients at pre-contract or delivery stage, the challenge shifted to managing programme risk, design quality, and stakeholder expectations across multiple interested parties. Extra Care has very particular design requirements, including dementia design, an area in which I have built considerable specialist knowledge.
approach
I provided support across the full development lifecycle. At strategic level, this included feasibility assessment, options appraisal, and funding strategy. At procurement stage, I led the appointment of development partners and specialist consultants. Community and stakeholder engagement was central throughout, including work with local councils, community groups, care providers, and environmental and heritage interests, to secure planning consent and local buy-in. I managed pre-contract negotiations with developers and planning authorities on behalf of clients. I have also found it particularly useful to bring an interior designer into the design team from an early stage, to deliver the best possible environment for the incoming residents and staff at handover.
outcome
Across these engagements, I contributed to the development of five Extra Care facilities and advised on others. On one scheme, pre-contract negotiations resulted in planning consent secured within agreed timescales through a bespoke Planning Performance Agreement. Clients consistently benefited from a grounded, joined-up perspective bridging housing development expertise with an understanding of health and social care commissioning.
capabilities demonstrated
Specialist housing strategy and feasibility
Extra Care scheme development and delivery
Multi-agency partnership and funding structures
Development procurement
Stakeholder and community engagement
Community-Led Housing in High-Pressure Rural Markets
Affordable Housing & Community Development | Community-Led Housing | Rural Affordable Housing Strategy | Stakeholder & Community Engagement | Landowner Negotiation | Local Authority Partnership
context
Rural and coastal communities face a distinctive form of housing crisis. Limited land, high property values driven by second-home and holiday-let demand, and communities where local people and key workers are increasingly priced out of their own towns and villages create conditions that conventional developer-led delivery struggles to address. I have worked on individual schemes for registered providers, and at local authority level across a predominantly rural and coastal area to develop community-led housing solutions in communities where conventional approaches were either unwelcome, financially unviable, or both. The programme involved sustained engagement across multiple parishes.
challenge
The challenge was as much political and social as it was technical. Communities that understood they had a housing problem were not always willing to accept a conventional solution to it. Local resistance to outside developers, complex and fragmented land ownership, and the absence of ready-made delivery vehicles meant that progress required trust-building, coalition-forming, and patient negotiation. In one coastal community, acute affordability pressure driven by second-home ownership had created particular urgency, but also particular sensitivity.
approach
I structured the work around three parallel tracks. The first focused on parish councils, building political understanding and buy-in for community-led approaches and creating the conditions under which elected community representatives would actively support rather than resist new housing. The second engaged landowners, identifying those with suitable sites and willingness to bring land forward for community-led housing, and working through the terms on which that could happen. The third supported nascent community housing groups in developing their governance, capacity, and delivery models, including cohousing as a mechanism for delivering affordable homes in a market where conventional tenure models had failed.
outcome
The programme produced concrete progress across multiple communities, with sites identified and landowners engaged, community housing groups developed to a point of active delivery readiness, and political consensus built among parish councils on the need for and legitimacy of community-led approaches. The work established a replicable model for rural affordable housing delivery that the authority was able to apply across its wider area, including in communities where previous attempts had stalled.
capabilities demonstrated
Community-led housing strategy and delivery
Rural affordable housing policy
Community and stakeholder engagement
Landowner negotiation
Local authority partnership
Large-Scale Brownfield Regeneration
Strategic Regeneration & Housing Delivery | Brownfield Regeneration Strategy | Large-Scale Programme Management | Land & Asset Appraisal | Public-Private Partnership | Affordable Housing Delivery
context
Large brownfield regeneration programmes present some of the most complex challenges in housing delivery, with legacy land conditions, multiple ownership interests, challenging viability, and the need to balance commercial return with affordable housing obligations and long-term community benefit. I have worked on major brownfield regeneration programmes with local authority and registered provider clients in London and across southern England, including working on a site with potential to deliver over 800 homes and associated commercial space on one of the most significant brownfield sites in its region, and the policy development stage for the regeneration of a coastal town centre area covering the seafront, public transport hub, and more than 2,000 households.
challenge
In each case, the core challenge was how to structure a programme that maximised housing delivery and economic return while recovering the client's investment, managing risk across a long development timeline, and maintaining community and political confidence. For local authority clients, this meant defining and defending a viable delivery model to elected members and senior leadership under conditions of financial constraint, while engaging a private sector development market with limited appetite for complex risk. For registered provider clients, the challenge was assessing regeneration, redevelopment, and disposal opportunities across an existing stock portfolio within a wider programme area.
approach
I provided strategic leadership across several interconnected workstreams. I engaged with private sector investors and developers to test appetite and help structure viable delivery models, and procured multi-disciplinary consultancy teams to support the programme. Land and asset reviews identified disposal and development opportunities, and I led feasibility work assessing mixed-use options to maximise value and placemaking outcomes.
outcome
Programmes progressed from strategic review into active delivery, with planning frameworks agreed, development partners identified or engaged, and funding structures established. One local authority programme advanced a scheme with potential to deliver over 800 homes alongside commercial space, with the potential to recover council investment while driving economic growth and housing supply, alongside wider regeneration of the surrounding area with new public realm as a key deliverable.
capabilities demonstrated
Brownfield regeneration strategy
Large-scale programme management
Land and asset appraisal
Public-private partnership structuring
Affordable housing delivery
work with us
If any of this work reflects the challenges you are facing, we would welcome a conversation.