The new homes in East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the Home Counties have been brought closer to delivery following the same model that unlocked sites for 21,000 homes in North Sussex in late 2025.

One of the biggest challenges to new homes is ensuring sufficient water and sewerage capacity for large new developments, which as NCE examined in January, stands outside of existing AMP8 infrastructure programmes that are already stretching delivery capacity.

This is a particular challenge in East Anglia, which is the driest part of the country and has some of the highest demand for increased housing.

Anglian Water Chief Executive Officer Mark Thurston commented “Given the concentration and scale of growth in the East of England, we are at the forefront of many major infrastructure projects, including two new reservoirs, our Strategic Interconnecting Pipeline, hundreds of miles of modern pipes, water recycling infrastructure and nature-based solutions, such as wetlands.

“We are working with regulators to chart the path between environmental compliance and supporting growth, and through our work with Defra’s Water Delivery Taskforce, Anglian Water is working with developers and local planning authorities at an earlier stage in the process to enable large scale developments of over 500 homes. This is an encouraging step forward in enabling us to deliver infrastructure upgrades over multiple investment cycles.”

The new housing projects in question include:

The Water Delivery Taskforce was established in April 2025 and brings together representatives from Defra and wider government, regulators, water companies and the wider water and planning sectors.

The taskforce was formed by then secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs Steve Reid MP in 2025 to support government, regulators and water industry representatives to meet major challenges and demands placed on the water sector. This has allowed it to support discussions and planning for new homes in areas where water industry delivery capacity might otherwise hinder progress.

In the case of the new homes being unlocked this week, the taskforce facilitated conversations with local authorities and developers about delivering a potential new water recycling centre for Grantham, as well as the existing construction of a strategic pipeline and 20-million-litre storage reservoir to allow for thousands more homes in the years ahead.

Current environment secretary Emma Reynolds commented: “This is another success story for the government’s Water Delivery taskforce, which has already unblocked over 55,000 homes with solutions driven by pragmatic thinking and long-term strategy.

“We are unlocking growth and getting Britain building while protecting our precious water supplies.”

This new success for the taskforce will reinforce the government’s commitment to speed up house-building by helping to remove barriers to construction without damaging environmental standards.

The previous announcement that 21,000 homes had been unlocked in Sussex resolved a four-year pause on development. Building work had been halted since 2021 due to concerns over the amount of water being taken from rivers and wetlands in the Arun Valley, which risked impacting protected wildlife and local water resources.

Under the agreement by Defra, Natural England, the Environment Agency and Southern Water, water abstraction permits were changed to limit the amount of water taken from local rivers and wetlands, and funding was provided to restore habitats. It was also agreed the new homes were to be built to higher water efficiency standards in line with the building regulation guidance for water scarce areas, reducing daily water use and easing pressure on local watercourses.

That announcement received positive support from Natural England, whose chief executive Marian Spain said: “This type of sustainable development clearly shows how we can build the new homes this country needs while restoring and protecting nature.”

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