I’ve spent months investigating how Sunderland is doing something that sounds simple but breaks the traditional development model: building homes while training the people who’ll build more homes.
The VELUX Living Places project sits on a brownfield site in central Sunderland. Forty to fifty mixed-tenure homes. A working laboratory integrated with HICSA (Housing Innovation and Construction Skills Academy), where 800 students train annually.
The UK needs 565,000 homes per year to close the housing gap by 2040. We’re building 200,000. The construction industry needs 251,500 extra workers by 2028.
You can’t solve one without solving the other.
Training Where You’re Building
Most development projects treat workforce training as someone else’s problem. Living Places puts the training facility inside the development footprint.
In practice:
Students learn on-site. They’re installing insulation, fitting windows, understanding ventilation systems on actual residential buildings.
The curriculum plugs into national frameworks. VELUX developed training modules that work across nine construction skills academies. What happens in Sunderland scales to other cities without reinventing the wheel.
The site serves dual purposes. It produces housing units and skilled workers. Both address critical shortages.
Sunderland City Council provided the brownfield land and regulatory support. Igloo Regeneration brought development expertise. MawsonKerr Architects designed for livability and training accessibility. VELUX contributed technical knowledge and training infrastructure. Nobody could do this alone.
Why Brownfield Sites Matter More Than You Think
The project sits on reclaimed industrial land.
Brownfield sites in the UK can accommodate 960,000 homes. These sites have infrastructure: transport connections, utilities, proximity to employment centers.
You’re not sprawling into greenfield. You’re repairing urban fabric.
The government requires every council in England to adopt a “brownfield first” approach. For councils in the 20 largest cities falling short of housing targets, the bar for refusing brownfield applications just got raised.
This creates momentum for projects like Living Places.
Brownfield development has complications. Contamination remediation. Complex ownership structures. Higher upfront costs compared to greenfield sites.
The Sunderland project addresses this by stacking value: you’re building homes and creating a training ecosystem that generates ongoing economic benefit. That changes the development math.
The Integration Nobody Else Is Attempting
Everyone talks about the skills crisis. I kept running into something different: the refusal to integrate the solution into the problem.
You can have funding, political will, approved plans. Without skilled workers, nothing gets built.
The construction industry faces demographic collapse. More than 35% of workers are over 50. By 2035, over one-third will retire. Meanwhile, only 5% of students actively consider construction careers.
The perception problem runs deep.
Only 19% of parents would encourage their child to pursue construction. Women represent 0.9% of housebuilders. The industry looks like 1975.
HICSA’s integration with Living Places changes that perception by showing construction as climate work, technology work, problem-solving work.
The training focuses on two tracks:
New build skills for projects like Living Places. Students learn modern construction methods, sustainable materials, energy-efficient building systems.
Retrofit skills for upgrading existing housing stock. Boiler replacement, insulation installation, window upgrades. The retrofit market matters as much as new construction because you can’t achieve climate goals by only building new homes.
The UK’s existing built environment represents both the largest carbon challenge and the largest opportunity for reduction.
What Mixed-Tenure Actually Means
The 40-50 homes in Sunderland include different ownership and rental structures in the same development.
I’ve seen mixed-tenure described as social engineering. That misses the point.
Single-tenure developments create economic segregation. You get concentrated poverty or concentrated wealth, both of which produce fragile communities.
Mixed-tenure developments allow people to move from one housing type to another without leaving their neighborhood. A student who trains at HICSA might rent, then buy a shared ownership unit, then move to full ownership as their career progresses.
That’s a housing ladder, not a housing trap.
Research shows well-planned mixed-tenure environments facilitate social interaction between owners and renters. This creates neighborhood stability and satisfaction across all tenure types.
The model works with proper design. You can’t mix tenure types randomly and expect community cohesion.
The Economic Multiplier Nobody Measures
Every £1 spent on UK construction generates almost £3 of wider economic benefit.
That’s the standard multiplier. But the Living Places model adds layers:
Direct construction employment. Building 40-50 homes creates immediate jobs.
Training output. 800 students annually who enter the workforce and build more homes elsewhere.
Local economic circulation. Workers spend wages in Sunderland. Suppliers provide materials. Services support the development.
Long-term skills infrastructure. The training facility outlasts the initial housing project and continues producing qualified workers.
I call this productive infrastructure. The development doesn’t just consume resources, it generates capability.
Traditional development models treat buildings as end products. This model treats buildings as platforms for ongoing economic activity.
Sunderland’s Bigger Ambition
The city wants to become the UK’s first net zero city.
That reflects competition among secondary cities to differentiate through sustainability leadership.
London, Manchester, Birmingham have established economic identities. Sunderland, Newcastle, Sheffield need different positioning strategies.
Climate leadership offers that differentiation.
Living Places serves as proof of concept. If you can build affordable, sustainable, mixed-tenure housing on brownfield sites while training the workforce to replicate the model elsewhere, you demonstrate capabilities that other cities will study.
You become the reference implementation.
I’ve watched cities compete for tech sector attention, financial services headquarters, cultural institutions. The next wave centers on climate innovation and workforce development.
The cities that figure out integrated models win.
What Transfers and What Doesn’t
I’m cautious about declaring any project a universal template.
Sunderland has specific advantages: available brownfield land in the city center, council commitment to net zero goals, existing partnership relationships, HICSA infrastructure in place.
Your city might not have those conditions.
But these elements transfer:
The partnership structure. Combining council land, private development expertise, corporate technical knowledge, and educational institutions distributes risk and combines capabilities.
The dual-output model. Designing developments that produce both housing and workforce capability addresses constraints simultaneously.
The curriculum approach. Training modules that plug into national frameworks scale beyond individual projects.
The brownfield focus. Most cities have underutilized industrial sites with existing infrastructure.
The mixed-tenure strategy. Creating housing ladders within neighborhoods produces more resilient communities than single-tenure developments.
What doesn’t transfer easily:
Specific financing structures. Each region has different subsidy programs, tax incentives, and funding mechanisms.
Regulatory environments. Planning requirements, building codes, and approval processes vary significantly.
Local labor markets. Some cities have stronger construction sectors than others.
Political dynamics. Council priorities and community relationships shape what’s possible.
The Constraint That Matters Most
After investigating this project, the binding constraint on UK housing delivery is human capital, not financial capital or political will.
You need 251,500 additional construction workers by 2028. One million by 2032. That requires a 34% increase in apprenticeship completion rates.
Without solving workforce development, every housing initiative hits a ceiling.
Living Places recognizes this. It builds training infrastructure into the development itself.
That integration changes the timeline. You’re not waiting for a separate workforce development program to produce qualified workers five years from now. You’re training people while building, creating a feedback loop.
The students working on Living Places might build the next phase. Some might live there. That’s a circular economic model that traditional development can’t match.
What I’m Watching Next
The Sunderland project is underway. I’m tracking several indicators:
Completion rates. Do the 40-50 homes get delivered on schedule and budget?
Training throughput. Does HICSA hit the 800 students annually target? What percentage complete programs and enter construction careers?
Curriculum adoption. Do other construction skills academies implement the training modules?
Replication attempts. Do other cities try similar integrated models?
Resident satisfaction. How do people who live in the mixed-tenure development rate their experience?
Economic impact measurement. Can anyone quantify the broader economic benefit beyond the standard construction multiplier?
I’m also watching whether private sector support for education becomes more common. If public funding can’t keep pace with the skills transformation required by climate transitions, industry-education partnerships might become standard.
Living Places represents one attempt. Not the only answer, but it’s asking better questions than most development projects: How do you build homes while building the workforce to build more homes? How do you make brownfield sites economically viable? How do you create housing ladders instead of housing traps?
The answers emerging from Sunderland will shape how other cities approach these challenges. The UK needs 565,000 homes per year. We’re building 200,000. That gap won’t close through incremental improvements.
The question isn’t whether Sunderland’s model works perfectly. It’s whether anyone else is willing to try something different.