Half-built schemes lose more value to missing paperwork than to the debt itself. When compliance evidence is missing, the fix isn't a valuation, it's re-measuring what's actually built, proving it, and pricing what it costs to finish.

Andy Burnham has promised Britain's biggest council housebuilding programme since 1945. That is the headline everyone has taken from his first week in office, and it is worth pausing on the word "council," because it points to a shift in who commissions housing in this country, not just how much of it gets built. For most of the last two decades, private housebuilders have set the pace. They chose the sites, ran the programmes, and instructed the consultants. Councils and reg

Homes England's figures for 2025/26 landed last week, and the temptation in Whitehall to call this a turning point will be strong. The agency enabled just over 40,000 completions, its best year since 2020, alongside more than 42,000 starts on site, and it beat two of its three government targets while lifting completions for social rent by 65 per cent, the tenure that matters most to people in greatest need. For an agency that has spent much of the past decade fielding critic

Keir Starmer resigned this morning. Andy Burnham is now the overwhelming favourite to replace him and could be in office within weeks. For those working in development, cost consultancy and investment, it is worth being clear about what that means commercially. Burnham is not anti-development. His record in Greater Manchester is evidence enough: house prices rose 63% over the past decade against London's 7%, and major schemes like Victoria North and Mayfield were delivered on

NatWest's £250m Section 106 loan fund, matched by Homes England, takes the total available for S106 acquisitions to £500m. It is good news for a market that has badly needed it. Around half of England's affordable housing is delivered through the S106 cross-subsidy model. When registered providers stopped buying, whole sites stalled. Private plots sat behind unsold affordable phases, and housebuilders mothballed schemes that were viable on paper but couldn't clear the afforda

Geography has become an excuse in this industry. Firms carve the country up between them as though expertise were a local resource, and everyone calls this discipline when really it is just habit. The result is a market that limits itself for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of advice on offer. Spending time in Leeds for UKREiiF brought this into focus. It is a brilliant city with real energy, particularly around Kirkgate, and a good reminder that the best wor

How AI is affecting projects for SME developers.

There is a point in every market cycle when you feel the shift. It does not come from a panel or a presentation. It comes from the change in energy on the ground. Across the UK property world, that shift is happening now. It is driven by the industry pulling in the same direction again. It is visible in the work being done by agents, planners, architects, quantity surveyors, engineers, funders, occupiers and facilities teams. Agents unlocking momentum Deals are moving. Opport

Everyone keeps saying UK housebuilders are in trouble. The FT quietly made a more interesting point this week: things don’t need to get “good” for the sector – they just need to stop getting worse. Three reasons why that matters: Planning is finally (slowly) moving.
After a decade of dysfunction, the direction of travel is changing. Mandatory targets are back, green belt flexibility is creeping in, and planning certainty – even marginally – has a big impact on land value and

Every construction project begins with a clear idea of what it should become. Yet for many SME builders and developers, the journey from vision to delivery is where challenges start to appear. Rising costs, unclear scopes and misaligned professional teams can quickly derail even the best intentions. At Axo, we work with SMEs who want the benefits of experienced commercial support without the overhead of a full-time in-house team. Our goal is simple: to help you deliver projec

As co-directors of Axo Consulting, Steve Cheesman and I founded the practice with a clear aim to simplify the planning and development process for clients. From the beginning our focus has been to bring clarity, disciplined judgement and integrated expertise to decisions that carry real consequence. Clients need a director-led partner who can cut through complexity and guide projects with confidence and accountability. Axo is an integrated property consultancy that combines d