Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, has struck a £150m deal with Britain’s biggest housebuilder to build a string of new garden towns and villages across the country as ministers seek to ramp up their ambitious housing plans.
Building giant Barratt Developments has teamed up with Lloyds Banking Group to build thousands of new homes in a joint venture led by Homes England, the government body responsible for housebuilding.
The scheme, known as the Made Partnership, will act as master developer for new residential developments ranging from 1,000 homes to more than 10,000 which will be built across the UK.
The developers said they plan to build garden village-style communities, which will also feature facilities such as schools and GP surgeries.
The venture will operate for at least 20 years and will initially be backed by £150m of cash provided in equal measure by Barratt, Lloyds and Homes England.
Housebuilding is a key priority for Sir Keir Starmer’s Government, which has pledged to build 1.5m new homes over the next five years.
The Government has placed a particular focus on new garden towns and villages as it looks to create scores of new communities across Britain.
It has said this is inspired by the policies of Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government, which built Milton Keynes and Welwyn Garden City.
However, financial analysts at Royal Bank of Canada said they did not expect any completions from the Made partnership until at 2028 “at the earliest”.
The venture has also failed to provide a figure for the amount of homes it wishes to build.
Ministers have brought back compulsory housebuilding targets for local authorities, which were ditched under the previous Conservative government, and will reform national planning policy.
The Government has said it will target so-called “grey belt” land on underused sites such as disused petrol stations and car parks to fuel the building plans.
The Town and Country Planning Association defines a garden city as a “holistically planned new settlement” that enhances the natural environment while offering high-quality affordable housing.
Matthew Pennycook, the housing and planning minister, said: “A failure to ensure the development system is working properly has held back the delivery of tens of thousands of new homes over recent years and this Government will work in partnership with all those who are focused on turning things around.
“The landmark new partnership announced today will support our commitment to ramp up housing supply and boost economic growth by developing more large-scale, attractive and sustainable places across the country with the homes, jobs and infrastructure that communities need to thrive.”
Alongside new homes, the partnership will also look to develop retail and leisure space and large commercial sites such as offices or industrial facilities.
Barratt, which is the UK’s largest housebuilder and listed on the FTSE 100, experienced a plunge in its profits last year as total home completions dropped by almost a fifth to 14,000.
The company blamed high interest rates and inflation for the declines and warned completions will drop further in the current financial year.
Barratt, which bought rival Redrow for £2.5bn this year, said it was expecting a boost to housebuilding from 2026 as Labour’s planning reforms come into effect.
David Thomas, the chief executive of Barratt, said: “We are committed to playing our part in delivering the millions of new homes the country needs over the next 10 to 20 years. To help us achieve this goal, we need to deliver more large developments.
“Through the Made Partnership, we are creating a master developer which can manage the infrastructure and placemaking that is needed to deliver at scale, whilst consistently achieving the high-quality and sustainability standards that Barratt is known for.”
Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, said: “Our pioneering Made Partnership between Lloyds Banking Group, Homes England and Barratt Developments has created a master developer – enabling the largest-scale projects and place-based solutions to be achieved, and helping to deliver tens of thousands of new homes which are so urgently required. This is the cross-sector collaboration we need, at significant ambition and scale.”
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