By Jonathan Lewis, Programme Manager
We’ve now announced all seven organisations that make up the first Built with Social Purpose (BwSP) cohort, and we’re excited to be working alongside a group of entrepreneurial, mission-led organisations that are finding new ways to deliver genuinely affordable homes and strengthen communities across the country.
Together, the cohort is on track to deliver up to over 160 genuinely affordable homes, using a range of models that prioritise:
- Long-term affordability
- Community ownership
- Local leadership
These organisations are not just building homes, they are shaping a more equitable, diverse and resilient housing landscape. They are not waiting for the system to change before acting. Across the cohort, organisations are already acquiring sites, securing planning permission, raising finance, bringing buildings back into use and delivering affordable homes in their communities.
Why Built with Social Purpose matters
Over the next two years, these organisations will not only deliver homes, they will also help demonstrate the role that social entrepreneurship can play in creating a fairer, more diverse and more resilient housing landscape. They are testing new approaches to affordability, ownership, stewardship and development, while proving that housing can be delivered differently.
The programme was born from a simple observation. Despite decades of policy attention, the housing sector remains heavily reliant on a relatively small number of large volume housebuilders. Successive governments have recognised the importance of diversification, yet many of the same barriers continue to restrict the growth of smaller, mission-led housing providers. Planning, land, finance and organisational capacity remain significant obstacles, while too little attention has been given to understanding what actually enables alternative housing producers to thrive.
Shared challenged across the housing sector
When the BwSP cohort came together for the first time, it quickly became clear that despite their different models and geographies, they face similar challenges.
For key themes emerged:
- A housing sector with a strong institutional bias towards scale and volume
- Funding and finance systems that often struggle to support innovation and early-stage development
- Regulatory and planning processes that disproportionately affect smaller organisations
- The organisational burden of delivering homes whilst navigating an increasingly complex system with limited resources
These challenges are consistent with insights from the Foundation’s broader work on housing diversification. While governments have introduced a range of initiatives to support Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) and other alternative housing producers, many have tended to address immediate constraints rather than the deeper structural barriers embedded within the housing market.
However, the policy context is evolving. Recent changes to the planning system, alongside the creation of the National Housing Bank, signal a renewed focus on increasing housing supply and supporting development. These reforms have the potential to address some of the underlying barriers identified through this work, but their effectiveness will depend on how they are implemented in practice. By supporting innovative projects and approaches, our fund can help test what works in the context of these reforms, build the evidence base, and ensure that policy changes translate into the systemic improvements needed to diversify housing production and delivery.
From barriers to innovation
What stood out most from our first cohort gathering wasn’t the discussion about barriers, it was the determination to overcome them.
Across the group, organisations are already delivering creative and practical solutions:
- Innovative ownership models and affordable rent approaches
- Neighbourhood regeneration
- Refurbishment and community stewardship
These examples show what becomes possible when entrepreneurial thinking is combined with a long-term social purpose.
There was also a strong appetite to work collectively. Not simply to share learning, but to create a stronger evidence base for change. Participants also highlighted the value of peer learning, collective problem solving and creating a stronger shared voice. The cohort itself is an important part of the programme, bringing together organisations that can learn from one another, support one another, and collectively build credibility for approaches that are often overlooked within mainstream housing delivery.
Building evidence for change in housing
A key insight from the cohort was that the sector doesn’t need more reports outlining the problems, many of the barriers are already understood.
What is often missing is real-world evidence. We want to move beyond simply identifying barriers and instead understand what it takes to overcome them. By capturing lessons from organisations actively delivering homes, we can begin to build a clearer picture of where innovation is working, where policy reforms are helping, and where further change is needed.
BwSP aims to address this by capturing:
- Lived experiences of navigating planning systems
- Practical insights on securing land and finance
- Examples of successful partnership-building
- Lessons from delivering homes in challenging conditions
That is where BwSP hopes to make a contribution.
Over the next two years, we will work alongside the cohort to capture the stories, insights and practical learning emerging from their development journeys. Together, they will help build a richer understanding of what enables housing with social purpose to succeed, where the system helps, where it hinders, and what needs to change to unlock far greater impact.
Supporting a more diverse housing landscape
Our ambition goes beyond supporting individual projects. We want to contribute to a housing landscape that:
- Values social entrepreneurship alongside large scale delivery
- Supports community ownership and stewardship
- Enables a broader range of organisations to contribute to solving the housing crisis.
The homes delivered through BwSP matter enormously. But so too does the opportunity to demonstrate that there are different ways to build, own and steward affordable homes.
Looking ahead: the future of social-purpose housing
Over the next two years, the cohort will generate more than homes. Together, they will generate evidence, insight and lived experience to build a clearer picture about what is takes for entrepreneurial, mission-led housing organisations to succeed. They will test new approaches, challenge assumptions and help show what happens when local leadership, social purpose and long-term affordability sit at the heart of housing delivery.
Our ambition
The ambition is simple:
- To demonstrate that genuinely affordable housing can be delivered differently
- To strengthen a growing movement of social-purpose developers
- To build the evidence needed to shape a housing sector that values community, innovation and long-term affordability just as much as scale
By bringing together delivery, evidence and collective influence, we hope to create the conditions for many more social-purpose developers to thrive and for a more diverse, innovative and resilient housing landscape to emerge.
This is just the start of the journey. We’ll be sharing stories, challenges, successes and lessons from the cohort as the programme evolves – Together, we hope not only to deliver affordable homes today, but to build the evidence, confidence and momentum needed for a more diverse, resilient and socially purposeful housing system tomorrow.
