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David Walker, Head of Infrastructure Consents at Carter Jonas, explains why utility infrastructure is the housing crisis hidden in plain sight...
The housing crisis is usually discussed in relation to land, planning, viability and funding. Increasingly, however, the question of whether a site can connect to necessary infrastructure is becoming increasingly decisive and a constraint on the location and speed with which developments can be delivered. No development is delivered by
planning consent alone: in order for a site to be viable (and crucially, investable) it needs power, water, wastewater capacity, drainage, broadband, electric vehicle charging and the associated substations, pumping stations and reinforcement works. Without these, a consented site is no more than a promise waiting for a connection. The new infrastructure test This matters acutely when margins are already tight. A delay to a grid connection, a requirement for off-site
reinforcement or uncertainty over wastewater capacity can affect phasing, grant assumptions and the ability of registered providers to take homes. The problem is not that utilities are ignored, but that they are often treated as a downstream delivery issue rather than an early planning risk. The conventional thinking being that the capacity is there, and the site just needs ‘plugging’ and ‘plumbing’ in. In a more benign market and in decades gone by, that assumption might have worked, but conventional thinking no longer applies and today it can determine whether much needed new housing and communities can be delivered and occupied, or whether they are deferred or redesigned. Power is no longer a background service Electricity is the clearest example. The government is keen to decarbonise power, electrify heat and transport and
support economic growth at the same time. Housing schemes are therefore competing for network capacity with renewable generation, battery storage, data centres, electric vehicle charging The Government has recognised this in several recent reforms, not least the National Grid’s £19bn Great Grid Upgrade which aims to reorder Furthermore, the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025 gives GEMA acting on behalf of the Secretary of State time-limited powers to intervene in the electricity connections process and require projects to be prioritised in line with strategic and system plans. Clearing speculative projects from the queue should help, as should the government’s March 2026 consultation on strategic demand connections, which seeks to tackle speculation and prioritise capacity for nationally
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