Everyone agrees we need more homes. So why aren’t they being built?

On a cleared regeneration site in Havering, 18 modular homes – built off site and assembled in place – now stand on land that could have sat empty, waiting for redevelopment. New regulations meant that the original scheme planned for the site was delayed due to planning and viability issues. Working together, Wates and Havering Council found another way. Instead of leaving the land idle, they put it to use temporarily, and people are starting to move in. “We want to build homes for people to live in,” says Pip Prongué, executive managing director of Wates Residential.

Eighteen homes, however, won’t touch the sides. At the end of March, a record 135,580 households in England were in temporary accommodation, including 177,530 children. The government has promised £39 billion for affordable and social homes over 10 years, with a target of 1.5 million new homes this parliament, and ministers and London’s City Hall have moved to streamline planning. Prongué, who oversees multiple development projects, backs the ambition but has concerns. “£39bn is great. It’s so welcome. But is it going to be enough to deliver what [the government] actually wants to deliver?” she says. “Schemes aren’t [financially] viable at the moment, and speeding up planning alone isn’t going to make it happen. Once you’ve got planning, it can often take a year to sign a Section 106 agreement. It shouldn’t take a year.”

A Section 106 agreement is the legally binding deal between developer and council covering obligations like affordable housing and local infrastructure. Planning itself hasn’t got any lighter either: in 1991, Prongué says, the average application ran to 120 pages. Today it’s 3,271. That’s a lot of red tape. Grant funding doesn’t cover the full cost of affordable homes, so schemes rely on private sales alongside them – which only works if the market is strong. “The reason people aren’t building houses is because nobody’s buying them,” Prongué says.

Housing has become too political. Big infrastructure is planned years in advance. Housing is never seen that way 

She wants housing planned like roads and power stations. “Housing has become too political,” she says. “Big infrastructure is planned years in advance, as part of the growth plan for the country. Housing is never seen that way. Give people somewhere to live – somewhere safe, somewhere warm – and they’ll go forward and thrive.”

Wates Residential builds in partnership with councils and housing associations. “Regeneration is too complex for any one person or organisation to do on their own,” Prongué says. “Local authorities and housing associations bring the land, the local knowledge and the long-term vision. The private sector brings the investment and the delivery expertise.”

Havering shows why. New building regulations require a second staircase in residential buildings over 18 metres. The scheme might have been exempt at the time, but the partners knew the building needs to be fit for the long term. Rather than treat this as a reason for a delay, the partnership turned the cleared site into homes.

In Wembley, a stone’s throw from the stadium, Wates, Brent Council and the Mayor of London blended their funding to deliver 291 homes, 141 of them affordable. At the centre is a shared courtyard with trees and a playground, open to everyone – something residents pushed for. “When you first consult with a community, the first things you typically hear about are bins and car parking,” Prongué says. “It’s only through that consultation that you can start talking about what more can be offered.”

That can mean thinking beyond the buildings themselves. At Gorse Ride in Wokingham, a postwar council estate Wates is regenerating, residents have been offered cooking classes, each with an air fryer to take home, alongside computer skills sessions and careers talks – examples of social value activities that occur on all of its projects. In 2025, Wates Residential measured £43.7 million of social value in the communities where it builds.

In Cardiff, Wates Residential and Octopus Energy delivered the first Zero Bills homes for sale in Wales, with solar panels, a battery and a heat pump, and no energy bills for 10 years under Octopus’s tariff. New builds are only part of the job. The wider Wates Group maintains almost one in seven social homes nationally, and its teams retrofit existing homes with insulation, solar panels and air source heat pumps, cutting bills and making them warmer and healthier.

Wates was established as a family business in 1897, and Prongué says the family is keen to protect that legacy: people still talk about living in “a Wates house” from the 1970s. It’s the same long view she wants from government. “What we need now is consistency, certainty and a relentless focus on delivery,” she says. “This might be the nut that’s too hard to crack, but [we need] cross-party consensus, so what’s in place now can stay beyond electoral cycles.”

The 1.5 million homes target gives the country something to aim at. Hitting it will take consistent long-term investment, practical policy and partnerships that outlast any single parliament. That long view underpins Wates’ role as headline sponsor of Big Issue’s 100 Changemakers, recognising people making lasting change in their communities and reflecting Wates’ purpose of reimagining places for people to thrive. “There’s a lot we want to do, and are doing, to try and help and leave that lasting legacy wherever we operate,” Prongué says.

Find out more at wates.co.uk