North Lanarkshire outlines 2,372-home housing pipeline

North Lanarkshire Council has outlined a five-year affordable housing pipeline containing 2,372 homes, combining projects already approved with a further 399 homes proposed for inclusion in its next Strategic Housing Investment Plan.

The programme for 2027/28 to 2031/32 contains 1,973 homes from approved projects alongside the new proposals. Delivery is expected to include council construction, schemes developed with Registered Social Landlords, and acquisitions through open-market and empty-home programmes rather than relying exclusively on new-build council housing.

One of the new proposals is a 44-home scheme at the former Centre Point and Mega Bar site in Brandon Street, Motherwell. Other projects are being advanced in Newarthill, Wishaw, Gartcosh, Bellshill, and elsewhere across North Lanarkshire.

The headline total should not be read as 2,372 homes with funding and contractors already secured. The council states that Scottish Government funding must still be confirmed and that individual projects will continue to be assessed for viability and value before proceeding.

North Lanarkshire has £36m confirmed for 2026/27, with a further £114.7m identified for the following three years. The authority has also made clear that more funding will be needed to deliver every scheme currently proposed, creating a direct link between the size of the paper pipeline and future capital allocations.

The council is not starting from an inactive programme. During 2025/26 it completed 126 affordable homes and began construction on another 347, while Registered Social Landlord partners completed a further 137. That produced 263 affordable completions across the area during the year.

Around 256 homes are expected to complete in 2026/27, with approximately 340 more scheduled to start construction. Those figures show why a rolling pipeline matters: projects have to sit at different stages of planning, design, funding, procurement, and construction if the authority is to maintain completions from one year to the next.

For contractors, that creates better visibility than a succession of isolated housing announcements, but it is not equivalent to guaranteed turnover. Schemes can move between years if grant assumptions change, abnormal site costs emerge, tenders exceed budgets, or planning and infrastructure issues delay procurement.

Brownfield locations such as the former Centre Point site can be particularly sensitive to those variables. Demolition, contamination, ground conditions, existing utilities, restricted access, and neighbouring uses can alter costs substantially before the first new home rises above ground.

Those uncertainties affect relatively modest schemes as much as larger developments. A 44-home project may carry fewer economies of scale for remediation, infrastructure, site management, and mobilisation, increasing the importance of early investigation and design control if the development is to remain within its funding assumptions.

The wider programme also mixes several delivery models. Council-built housing, Registered Social Landlord development, and property acquisition draw on different funding and procurement arrangements, so the 2,372-home total does not translate into one uniform construction route.

That diversification can help the authority maintain housing supply when one route slows. Existing homes can sometimes be acquired more quickly than new developments can be designed and built, while housing associations may progress schemes with different borrowing and grant structures from the council’s own programme.

New construction nevertheless remains central, and North Lanarkshire has committed to energy-efficient and accessible housing as schemes move forward. Those requirements increase the importance of fabric design, airtightness, heating, ventilation, renewables, controls, and commissioning, particularly where lower operational costs are expected to justify higher capital expenditure.

Accessibility has similar implications for layouts and external works. Level thresholds, circulation space, bathroom arrangements, door widths, parking, gradients, and adaptability have to be built into the design early rather than treated as modifications after planning layouts are substantially fixed.

The council’s existing housing programme has already used technologies including ground-source heat pumps and solar PV on individual developments. Future projects need not repeat identical solutions, but previous schemes give the authority operating and maintenance experience against which new specifications can be tested.

Construction capacity will also influence delivery. If several council and housing-association schemes reach tender at the same time, they draw on many of the same regional subcontractors, designers, utilities specialists, and product suppliers. A long forward programme is valuable only if the market can price and resource it competitively.

The Strategic Housing Investment Plan is intended to help target limited Scottish Government Affordable Housing Supply Programme resources against those competing priorities. North Lanarkshire is due to submit the 2027/28 to 2031/32 plan by 30 October, after which individual projects will continue through their own approvals.

The useful number is therefore not merely 2,372. Of that total, 1,973 homes sit within projects already approved, while 399 represent the next additions to the pipeline; £36m is confirmed in the immediate funding year, £114.7m is identified beyond it, and the council acknowledges that the complete programme still needs more money.

That makes delivery a continuing exercise in keeping projects viable rather than announcing a single housebuilding target. The construction workload is substantial, but every site still has to survive the less glamorous arithmetic of land, grant, design, tender price, infrastructure, and programme before the proposed homes become starts on site.