How Prisoners Building Homes is reducing reoffending and delivering affordable housing

Our prison system is under severe pressure. Since 1990, the UK prison population has risen by 94%, while capacity has failed to keep pace. Last year, almost three-quarters of prisons in England and Wales were overcrowded. Emergency measures, including an early release scheme, have only provided temporary respite.

The UK is also experiencing a social housing crisis. In England, social housing makes up just 16% of the housing stock. As of March 2024, 1.33 million households are on social housing waiting lists, and in 2024/25, English councils spent £2.8bn on temporary accommodation, a 25% rise from the previous year. Research by Shelter suggests it would take over a century to clear the waiting list at current housebuilding rates. 

Prisoners Building Homes (PBH), a cross-sector initiative hosted by one of LGIU’s strategic partners, Local Partnerships, aims to address both challenges. The scheme strives to support prisoners and reduce re-offending, while tackling the skills gap in trades and helping local authorities utilise brownfield sites and build high-quality social housing. 

Background

PBH is hosted by Local Partnerships and was launched as a national programme in September 2024. It won the ‘Programme of the Year Award’ at the Civil Service Awards 2025, has sponsors across national government and is supported by His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service, with eight prisons involved so far.

The initiative matches housebuilders with prisons, with vetted low-risk prisoners being trained and working in prison workshops or on day release in factories. PBH then works with local authorities to identify under-utilised brownfield sites and offers initial planning, design, and feasibility study at reduced cost. Homes are typically built off-site and driven to the location and assembled in as little as 16-26 weeks. 

Social value

Re-offending has high social and fiscal costs. The two-year reconviction rate in the UK is around 53% – significantly higher than many European countries (Norway’s is c.20%). Adults released from sentences of less than 12 months in the UK are particularly likely to commit further offences, and 66% re-offend within a year. At an average annual cost of £53,801 per prisoner, the government, as well as communities, is paying a heavy price for re-offending.  

One of the biggest problems adults face after being released is finding employment. This is where PBH is helping to provide solutions, and so far, they have upskilled 171 prisoners. While on the scheme, prisoners earn at least the National Living Wage, paying taxes and a 40% victim surcharge deduction to support crime victims. 89% of those who have taken part in the initiative were able to find employment, supporting their rehabilitation into society.

These new workers are vital for the construction sector, which currently has over 140,000 estimated vacancies in skilled trades, like bricklaying, plumbing and roofing. Crucially, as well as boosting the labour force, PBH reports a one-year re-offending rate of 5%, compared with a national average of 28%.

Case Study: Thanet District Council

Thanet District Council provides a strong case study for how local authorities outside the South West are engaging with PBH. The council has worked with the programme since April 2025 and has been supported through the feasibility assessment of several council-owned brownfield sites that had previously been deemed unworkable. Two such sites are Prospect Road and St Mary’s Road in Minster.

Reece Lemon, Programme Delivery Officer at Thanet District Council, says: “Smaller sites are often more complex than bigger ones, and this is where PBH has really helped.” He said the main attractions of PBH are their expertise in working with brownfield land, the funding opportunities attached to the programme, and the “added confidence that comes from the resulting feasibility exercises”, all of which help enormously in unlocking internal funding.

After identifying brownfield sites in Minster, the council’s internal programme delivery officers discussed the sites with PBH and utilised their pre-development AI toolkit to conduct massing studies and structural site appraisals. The sites are now moving into the formal pre-planning application process in the coming weeks.

Opportunities for local government

Thanet District Council has identified several opportunities for local authorities:

• Shared knowledge and delivery experience: Critical review of complex sites, drawing on multiple sources of expertise and experience.
• Site mobilisation and survey works: Use of the Pre-Development Toolkit to support early feasibility studies and identify opportunities and constraints.
• Confidence in delivery mechanisms: A tried-and-tested approach already rolled out elsewhere.
• Social value: High levels of social value are embedded throughout the programme and delivery process.

Lessons from Thanet

One of the key issues highlighted was “myth-busting”. The council acknowledged that communities may have concerns about safeguarding, clarifying that vetted prisoners are employed directly by housebuilders – not the council – with most construction occurring off-site. 

Another misconception is that the scheme is “punitive”. Reece outlined,

“That is the complete antithesis of what the scheme is, and the biggest issue is that it sounds like something it’s not. It’s actually a really empowering process.”

Thanet also highlighted the more practical challenges they faced, including the need to emphasise local pressures to the PBH design team during the design process, so that the plans have less chance of being rejected. Other challenges included coordinating engagement across teams, navigating internal governance processes, understanding funding arrangements and council obligations, and ensuring project milestones aligned with the programme timetable.

Progression

A separate PBH scheme in Thanet, delivering 25 homes in Ramsgate, highlights how the programme has evolved to overcome challenges. While the programme initially focused on factory-built volumetric modules, the project has expanded to incorporate wider Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), including timber framing and traditional build. This ensured the Ramsgate project remained financially viable when pure modular scaling failed to meet the necessary economies of scale. Reece said,

“We are enjoying working with the team, but it is also yielding positive results, so our message to other councils would be to go for it. It has helped us to mobilise and unlock sites, but it’s also captured our imagination a bit. A programme that allows housebuilding for people who really need housing, but also gives a second chance to people, is a fantastic thing.”

The view from housebuilders: Dragonheart Homes

According to PBH, the programme is helping deliver over 1,200 homes. Once brownfield sites are identified for development, and the pre-construction stage is completed, houses are built by prisoners in factories or specialised workshops, typically using volumetric modular construction. 

The initiative works with 10 different accredited housebuilders and matches these with prisons across the country, and one of these housebuilders is Dragonheart Homes.

Jason Bassett, the Operations Director at Dragonheart Homes, outlined to LGIU the core benefits of the scheme: “One is that it gives us access to reliable staff, and the other is that they open up land banks from local authorities and get planning permission before appointing the housebuilders to build the homes.”

Last year, Dragonheart Homes built 145 homes through the scheme, an increase from 120 homes in the previous year. They have had 41 prisoners go through the programme, and 85% of them gained full-time employment within six months. The housebuilder has also written an NVQ training programme so that prisoners can formally qualify and obtain a Construction Skills Certification Scheme (CSCS) card, which allows them to work on any construction site in the country.

The housebuilder is partnered with HMP North Sea Camp prison and employs people on Release on Temporary Licence (ROTL), who travel to the factory by minibus. It has also developed a skill centre within the prison, so that prisoners can learn basic skills.

“It’s about changing lives, not just for the people coming out of the system, but for their children, and it leads to fewer victims, so holistically it’s a really powerful programme. They always turn up to work and pick up the skills really quickly, and we have a re-offending rate of under 1%.”

PBH aims to build over 10,000 low-carbon, affordable homes and unlock over 1,000 brownfield sites by 2029, helping over 20,000 vulnerable people come off council waiting lists. 

The view from PBH

Sophie Baker, Director for PBH, spoke to LGIU to outline the biggest opportunities of the initiative for local government. 

“We unlock sites that otherwise wouldn’t come forward, creating a real opportunity to deliver a significant number of much-needed homes,” Baker says. “We also support rehabilitation, skills development and positive futures for those involved in the programme.”

Also key to the appeal of PBH is their use of an innovative AI tool, which scans geographic regions to identify viable brownfield land. Once identified, the software runs site appraisals, produces environmental reports, and generates conceptual site designs. Early modelling suggests this could reduce planning costs by 50% and speed up securing planning permission by 15%.

Baker says: “The AI tool we have developed with LandClan helps to quickly siphon down sites and pick those that are able to be put forward without wasting public sector money. Not only are we delivering affordable homes, but we are providing employment opportunities to people furthest from the labour market, reducing re-offending, preventing further victims and making communities safer.”

Her message to local authorities is simple,

“If you have any sites that are proving challenging to bring forward, we’d be happy to see what we can do together to unlock them while delivering measurable social value alongside new homes.”

PBH will be presenting at the Local Government Association Conference and can be contacted via their website.