If you're a contractor working in social housing, 2026 is shaping up to be one of the most significant years the sector has seen in a generation. The government's committed £39 billion to social housing over the next decade, with bidding opening in February 2026. At the same time, Building Safety Act requirements are intensifying, and the retrofit agenda is accelerating.
Understanding these trends now—and what they mean for workforce planning—could be the difference between capitalising on opportunity and struggling to keep pace with competitors.
1. Building Safety Act Complexity Continues to Deepen
The data from 2025 tells a stark story: only 14% of Gateway 2 applications were approved as compliant between October 2023 and September 2024. The Building Safety Regulator remains under significant pressure, backlogs continue to grow, and approval timelines are extending rather than shortening.
For social housing contractors, this matters more than most. Tower blocks, multi-storey residential developments—the projects that make up a significant portion of social housing work—face the most intensive regulatory scrutiny. Additionally, Awaab's Law came into force in October 2025, requiring social landlords to address damp and mould within strict timeframes and all emergency hazards within 24 hours.
The workforce implications are significant. Projects now require building control surveyors who genuinely understand the new regime, fire safety specialists with current experience, and project managers who can navigate regulatory documentation requirements. The gap between having staff who've ‘read the guidance’ and those who've actually shepherded projects through Gateway 2 approval is proving decisive in project timelines and outcomes.
2. The £39 Billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme
In July 2025, the government announced a 10-year £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme. To put that in perspective, it's double previous funding levels. The programme could deliver around 300,000 affordable homes, with at least 180,000 being social rent homes—representing at least 60% of all homes delivered.
The immediate impact includes an upfront £2 billion injection to deliver up to 18,000 homes this Parliament, focused on shovel-ready sites. For councils, the rules have
fundamentally changed—they can now combine Right to Buy receipts with grant funding with no limits on the level of receipts used. 29 councils have already received £5.5 million through the Council Housebuilding Support Fund to develop larger, more rapid bids.
London's receiving up to £11.7 billion over the decade—the largest and longest-term settlement the GLA has received in its history. Established Mayoral Strategic Authorities outside London will shape £7 billion in indicative spending for the first time.
Bidding opens in February 2026. The scale and pace of this programme means that demonstrating workforce capability won't just be about having good relationships or competitive pricing—it'll be about proving you can mobilise skilled teams quickly and deliver at scale.
The skills these programmes demand are specific: site managers and contracts managers with experience managing multiple social housing units simultaneously, quantity surveyors who understand the tight margins social housing operates within, and trades supervisors who know how to work with housing associations and local authorities. Section 106 experience, understanding of registered provider requirements, and track records of delivering affordable housing are becoming essential qualifying criteria.
3. The Retrofit Revolution and Its Workforce Gap
Social housing providers face the reality of needing to invest £40-50k per home by 2050 to ensure properties are safe, high quality, and decarbonized. The government's targeting all social housing to meet EPC C by 2030. There's over £1 billion of new investment between 2026-27 and 2029-30 specifically for cladding remediation, plus £2.5 billion in low-interest loans over the Spending Review period.
The challenge? The Construction Leadership Council's National Retrofit Strategy identified that we need at least an additional 400,000 tradespeople to tackle the work required to hit Net Zero targets. Current estimates suggest the industry has less than 2% of the workforce it needs for retrofit work at scale.
Retrofit isn't simply standard construction with a focus on energy efficiency. It requires genuinely specialised competencies: heat pump installation (both air source and ground source), solar PV systems and battery storage integration, fabric insulation techniques for existing buildings, ventilation systems that work with modern insulation standards, and PAS 2035 compliance understanding.
The workforce gap is particularly acute in social housing retrofit because installations often happen in occupied properties, requiring different skills and approaches than new build work. A mechanical engineer who's excellent at new build heat pump installations
faces a very different challenge retrofitting systems into occupied tower blocks with existing infrastructure constraints.
These three forces create a complex workforce planning challenge. Social housing contractors are competing not just with each other but with the wider construction industry for a shrinking pool of qualified professionals. The 38,000 current job vacancies in construction, the need for nearly 48,000 extra workers annually, and the demographic reality that 58.3% of the workforce is aged 36-65 while only 7.8% are aged 18-25 means traditional recruitment approaches are increasingly ineffective.
The Brexit impact continues to compound the challenge—over 200,000 EU workers have left UK construction since 2019, and they're not returning. In London, EU construction workers dropped from 42% to 8% of the workforce between 2018 and 2021.
Firms approaching workforce planning strategically are thinking differently about several key areas:
Building Capability Pipelines, Not Just Filling Vacancies: Rather than waiting until winning a contract to recruit, leading contractors are identifying and building relationships with key talent before they need them. This is particularly critical for programme work where mobilisation speed can determine success.
Investing in Specialist Screening: The cost of a poor hire has increased dramatically. Someone with claimed Building Safety Act experience who hasn't actually navigated Gateway 2 approval can add months to project timelines. Someone with stated retrofit expertise who hasn't actually implemented PAS 2035 requirements can jeopardise entire programmes.
Developing Strategic Workforce Plans: Understanding which capabilities need to be built in-house versus sourced externally, what the optimal team structure looks like for different types of work, and where training investments will actually deliver returns requires genuine strategic thinking, not reactive recruitment.
Leveraging Market Intelligence: Knowing which competitors are struggling with Building Safety Act requirements, which firms are scaling back retrofit work due to skills shortages, and what specialists are actually commanding in the market provides competitive advantage in both recruitment and bidding.
Bidding for the Social and Affordable Homes Programme opens in February 2026. Housing associations, local authorities, and registered providers are finalising their bids
now. If you want to be a delivery partner on these programmes, demonstrating workforce capability in bids is increasingly important—not promises about future recruitment, but evidence of current capability or concrete mobilisation plans.
January and February are also historically when construction professionals make career decisions for the year ahead. They assess their options, evaluate the market, and decide where to invest the next phase of their career. Firms that aren't building relationships with key talent during this period often find themselves competing for a much smaller pool by March or April.
The £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme represents the most significant investment in social housing in recent memory. The retrofit agenda creates sustained, long-term work. But both opportunities require specialist skills that are in desperately short supply.
The Building Safety Act means that compliance expertise is no longer optional—it's essential. The scale of programmes being procured means mobilisation speed matters more than it has historically. The demographic reality of the construction workforce means that traditional recruitment approaches are producing diminishing returns.
Social housing contractors who treat workforce planning as strategically as they treat bid development or financial planning are positioning themselves differently for 2026. Those who recognise that capability to deliver is becoming as important as competitive pricing in winning work are thinking differently about how they build and retain talent.
The opportunities ahead are genuine and substantial. The question is whether firms are planning for them now or will react to them later.
If you’d like to talk about what your 2026 could look like, get in touch.
.jpg)
Building Careers UK Ltd is registered in England and Wales, our company registration number is No. 06210098. Please view our Site Terms & Privacy Policy. Site designed and built by Storyhouse Creatives.
©
Building Careers UK Ltd is a proud member of REC, to find out more please visit their website.