Unlocking Birmingham’s housing future
29th January, 2026
The ‘Unlocking Birmingham’s Housing Future’ roundtable, hosted by Ward Hadaway in collaboration with Birmingham City Council, brought together a diverse group of civic leaders and housing experts to explore the challenges and opportunities for social housing delivery in the city.
Set against the backdrop of the Government’s proposed 10-year UK infrastructure strategy, the discussions highlighted the complex interplay of factors influencing housing viability and the urgent need for collaborative, strategic action to unlock delivery at scale.
Participants from across the public, private, and third sectors including West Midland’s Mayor, Richard Parker, Leader of Birmingham City Council, Cllr John Cotton, Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council and Deputy Mayor to the West Midlands, Cllr Sharon Thompson and Helen Collins, Chair of the Homes Mayoral Taskforce, came together to share their experiences of the key barriers to social housing delivery.
Navigating high retrofit costs, skills shortages, land values, and policy uncertainty, the roundtable underscored the scale of the challenge facing Birmingham, with approximately 24% of the city’s population living in social housing and around 25,000 households currently on the waiting list.
However, alongside these challenges, the discussions also identified significant opportunities for Birmingham and the West Midlands to lead the way in social housing delivery. The city’s young population, regeneration potential, and extensive land assets were seen as key strengths that could be leveraged to drive innovation and growth.
A central theme emerging from the roundtable was the importance of treating affordable housing as essential infrastructure, fully integrated with wider systems of transport, education, health, and digital connectivity. This aligns closely with the vision set out in a new White Paper co-authored by Joanna Lee-Mills and Cllr Sharon Thompson that was shared with participants and argues for a fundamental shift in how we conceptualise and deliver social housing. You can pre-register for the White Paper, The UK’s 10-Year Infrastructure Strategy: A Critical Analysis Through a Social Housing Lens, here.
The White Paper makes four core recommendations that resonated with the roundtable discussions:
- Establishing a Social Housing Infrastructure Commissioner within the new National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority, ensuring consistent representation in infrastructure planning.
- Developing a comprehensive National Retrofit Strategy to address the £50-70k per property investment needed to meet net zero targets systematically rather than piecemeal.
- Creating a Regional Housing Innovation Hub in the Midlands, bringing together housing associations, universities, manufacturers and local engineers to pioneer solutions that can scale nationally.
- Paying closer attention to supported housing infrastructure needs, a gap in the current evidence base that warrants focus as the Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 is implemented.
Participants emphasised the need for a more holistic, place-based approach to housing delivery, one that recognises the critical role of stable, affordable homes in underpinning health outcomes, educational attainment, and economic productivity. By investing in housing as part of wider community infrastructure, the region could unlock significant social and economic benefits for its residents.
The roundtable also highlighted the urgent need for reform of the planning system to accelerate the pipeline of deliverable sites. Participants identified chronic under-resourcing of planning departments, inconsistent approaches to viability assessment, and the cumulative burden of Section 106 and CIL as key barriers to delivery. The discussions echoed the white paper’s call for greater investment in planning skills and capacity, alongside more pragmatic, collaborative approaches to unlocking brownfield land.
Participants shared a range of potential solutions, including standardising viability assessments, adopting faster partnership models, and enabling planners to work more flexibly within a clear citywide vision. Developing regional approaches to skills, economic development, and deployment of expertise was also seen as critical to overcoming current constraints.
The importance of strengthening collaboration between local authorities, registered providers, developers, and infrastructure providers emerged as another key theme from the roundtable. Participants emphasised the need for closer alignment between national policy ambition and local delivery capacity, as well as the potential for the Midlands to pioneer new models of partnership working.
The white paper’s emphasis on the unique challenges faced by social housing providers, particularly in serving communities in regeneration areas, resonated strongly with the experiences shared by roundtable participants. The discussions highlighted the need for more targeted funding, better coordination of infrastructure delivery, and greater recognition of the social and economic value of stable, affordable homes.
Looking ahead, the roundtable identified several key priorities for action, including leveraging public sector land assets, investing in existing homes alongside new development, embracing digital and technology solutions, and developing a clear, compelling vision for the future of social housing in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
Realising this vision will require bold, coordinated action across the public, private, and third sectors. The white paper provides a valuable framework for this collaboration, but the real test will be in translating its recommendations into tangible outcomes for communities across the city.
The ‘Unlocking Birmingham’s Housing Future’ roundtable demonstrated the wealth of expertise, commitment, and creativity that exists within Birmingham’s and the West Midlands’ housing sector. By working together to address the challenges identified and seize the opportunities ahead, the city and region has the potential to transform social housing delivery and set a new standard for the nation.
Once again, we thank all participants for their valuable contributions and look forward to continuing the conversation as we work to build a more sustainable, inclusive, and prosperous future for the city and the West Midlands.
If you would like to register to receive a copy of the White Paper to be sent to you when it is published, please click here.
Please note that this briefing is designed to be informative, not advisory and represents our understanding of English law and practice as at the date indicated. We would always recommend that you should seek specific guidance on any particular legal issue.
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