56% of new home completions could be attributed to just six housing developers in 2025 according to recent data from the National House Building Council (NHBC).
The NHBC keeps track of residential construction statistics for approximately 80% of the UK’s housing developers, claiming that around 10 thousand builders and developers register with them each year.
This news comes as the Labour government’s ‘New Towns programme’, which aims to build up to 12 new towns across England, and is part of a wider effort to deliver 1.5 million new homes by 2029, remains in its planning and assessment phase.
Giving evidence to the House of Lords Built Environment Committee on 11 November about the New Towns programme, architecture expert Phineas Harper, said: “How do you get that healthy mix of local knowledge but also innovation – where’s the competition coming from?
“We don’t have any of these things because these very large firms are able to roll out roughly the same sort of thing everywhere.”
“Local authorities don’t really have the power to stop them.”
These housing developers, known as volume builders, are backed by large sums of capital, and specialise in building large quantities of properties, using a standardised set of designs, with labour commonly being sourced from outside the area in which they are building.
Figures from the NHBC, which account for 80% of the UK’s housing developers, and data from the annual reports of these six volume builders, shows their share of UK housing completions doubled from 2007 to 2025.
The most recent available data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), suggests a smaller market share of 35% for 2024, however, these data sets remain incomplete.
Such a concentration of housing completions with so few developers is less common across European Union states, meaning the UK is at a greater risk of architectural homogeneity, a lack of local and cultural consideration, and poorer quality implementation of infrastructure.
In a comment given to the South West Londoner, Lord Richard Best OBE DL, chair of the Town and County Planning Association, said: “As I understand it, it is not the plan to put these developments in the hands of major volume house builders.
“Rather, the idea is to create a New Town Development Corporation – [that] would take the overall responsibility for developing a master plan and then parcelling out sites to house builders but also to housing associations, specialist providers, with park land, a range of amenities and facilities.”
“I think the model that is envisaged for the New Towns could and should be applied to smaller developments rather than relying on one of the oligopoly of major developers.”
Small and medium enterprise (SME) builders, are locally focussed construction firms, which are better suited to interests of local employment, and local character, who according to the Federation of Master Builders, account for about 10% of housing developments today.
In a survey of SME builders conducted by the Home Builders Federation (HBF), 62% of respondents said they could develop 1–50 properties a year, and 97% said the Labour government’s 2029 target of 1.5million homes was very or somewhat unachievable.
A barrier to SME developers turning a profit, and increasing the volume of their output, is the ‘discretionary planning system’ – in which planning applications are approved on a case by case basis by local councils; a lengthy process which increases the financial burden for developers with less capital backing.
According to the HBF, 94% of planning application miss the statutory determination deadline.
Speaking to the South West Londoner, Russel Curtis, Director at RCKa architects said: “What frustrates me is the tendency to conflate all developers into a single group. The volume house builders and SME developers are subject to entirely different constraints.
“The planning system introduces too much uncertainty; these decisions can come down to a few councillors on the night – It’s absurd.
“SME developers better understand the market they’re working in and are able to deliver homes that reflect local needs, as well as contributing to the local economy.
“Their supply chains tend to be localised, procuring materials and labour from the area around the homes they’re building, employing bricklayers, electricians and decorators and creating opportunities for training within the surrounding community.”
If trends continue, and without further intervention in the SME industry, the data suggests that the UK’s architectural landscape will continue to be shaped by major firms, this, however, will be tested with the progression of Labour’s New Towns programme and the creation of the New Towns Development Corporation.
Featured image: Richard Bell on Unsplash
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