With the NLA’s upcoming insight study on Public Housing, we invite housing leaders to share their insights on how we can work together to deliver high-quality, public housing.

Jay Morton, Director at Bell Phillips, makes the case for a dedicated leader in construction innovation to help shape London into an equitable and regenerative city for future generations. 

The government has set out plans to build 1.5 million homes, a significant proportion of which will be in London. Over the past decade, public housing has re-emerged as a vital part of the city’s housing supply, delivered through infill projects, innovative schemes, and high-quality design as showcased by the NLA. While delivery numbers are currently down, there is no doubt that a next phase is coming. But that next phase cannot simply be about more of the same. It must move beyond how many we build to how we build. 

Here lies the challenge. To deliver the homes we need at the speed required risks blowing through our carbon budget. Yet we cannot deny the urgent social justice case for new homes. To square this circle, we need to innovate, and we need to innovate quickly. 

Innovation does not always mean brand new technology. It can mean looking back as much as looking forward. Our winning proposal for the 2023 William Sutton Prize asked a simple question: what if every home under five storeys was built entirely from natural materials? Such a move could make a profound contribution to achieving net zero. If these materials were sourced in the UK, the benefits would multiply: reduced transport emissions, reforestation, improved biodiversity, and the stimulation of a new green economy. 

We set out to test these principles empirically, developing a place-specific vernacular that is contemporary, cost-effective, airtight, and well insulated. Architecture for a warming climate. We designed homes from timber, hempcrete insulation, lime render, and natural stone and tested them, calculating their emissions over their entire life cycles. Those ideas are now becoming reality in a live project with Clarion. 

This is not just about housing numbers or even carbon. It is about economic opportunity. A national programme of regenerative construction could create factories, skills, and supply chains that root jobs in local communities while positioning the UK as a leader in green building technologies. We should see this as an industrial strategy as much as a housing strategy. 

Yes, we will still need tall buildings. And here too we must innovate, look to reduce concrete and also to replace it altogether. We should look to hybrid structures, advanced timber, new uses of stone and totally new technologies as they are developed. But public housing can and should lead the way, setting the agenda for truly regenerative building. 

Public housing has always been a mirror of social ambition. At its best, it has provided not just roofs over heads, but models for how we live together. The next era must embrace that role again. With the right investment in regenerative construction infrastructure, from training to manufacturing to research, public housing can lead the shift to homes that are low carbon, low cost, and genuinely healthy for people and planet. 

This needs leadership as well as innovation. A dedicated Minister for Construction Innovation should be appointed to set the agenda, give industry certainty, and ensure that the housing we build meets both our social and climate obligations. This is London’s opportunity to build at scale without repeating the mistakes of the past. The homes we deliver in the next decade will shape the city for generations. Let us make them the benchmark of a new era: innovative, equitable, and regenerative.