Wates lands £23m Crown Estate green homes pilot in Hemel Hempstead

Wates has won a £23 million contract from the Crown Estate to build a 75-home green housing pilot in Hemel Hempstead that will shape a planned 4,000-home expansion. The two-stage deal puts the contractor at the front of one of the UK's most closely watched experiments in low-carbon housebuilding.

What is Westwick Row?

The Westwick Row scheme sits on a five-acre site beside Leverstock Green Primary School. It will deliver houses, flats and a community hub, with 30% of the homes classed as affordable housing. That works out at roughly 22 affordable homes within the 75-home pilot.

Wates Residential beat two other bidders for the job: Greencore Homes and Kind & Co. Developer TOWN is working with the Crown Estate on the tenure mix, which includes 27 cohousing homes alongside rental properties. Cohousing residents will own their own homes but share facilities, outdoor spaces and a common house used for meals and events.

How will the contract work?

The project starts under a pre-construction services agreement. Wates will first sharpen the design, construction plans and price before any bricks are ordered. The main build depends on two things: hitting the target cost and securing the Crown Estate's formal approval. It's a structure that shifts design risk forward and gives the client an exit point if the numbers don't stack up.

How green are the homes?

The performance targets are written into the contract, not left as aspirations:

• Upfront embodied carbon must come in below 300kgCO₂e per square metre
• Annual operational energy use is targeted at 35kWh per square metre — a fraction of what a typical UK home consumes
• Homes will follow Passivhaus principles
• The scheme will take part in the UK Net Zero Carbon Buildings Standard pilot

Timber frames and high-performance building fabric are the main tools for cutting both carbon emissions and energy bills. To put the operational target in perspective, 35kWh per square metre per year is far below the UK average home's energy intensity, which is the mechanism behind the promise of lower bills for residents.

What comes after the pilot?

The Crown Estate wants to use Westwick Row as a proving ground — testing greener construction methods and lower running costs — before rolling the lessons into the much larger East Hemel development of 4,000 homes. The ambition is an approach the Crown Estate can replicate across its wider housing pipeline.

Westwick Row is one of three demonstration projects. The others sit in Wootton, Bedfordshire, and Knutsford, Cheshire. Together, the near-200-home programme will test new ways to build, own and rent homes while cutting living costs.

The pilot also aims to change process, not just product. Future residents, renters and neighbours will help shape the homes and shared spaces — an unusual move for a housing development of this scale.

Who is on the design team?

Periscope has led the masterplanning and landscape design at Westwick Row. Architects Mole and Archio are designing the homes. If the pilot hits its cost and carbon targets, the same playbook could define how one of Britain's largest landowners builds housing for years to come.