Nine social houses to be built on Clapton estate as council tackles housing backlog

Nine new social homes have been approved for construction on Clapton’s Nye Bevan estate. Photograph: Citizens Design Bureau

Hackney Council has announced plans for nine new terraced houses, the first of hundreds of new council houses officials hope to build in the borough.

The houses will replace a row of underused garages on the Nye Bevan Estate along Millfields Road in Clapton. Each will have three bedrooms, a study room and private gardens and a pocket park will be created which everyone on the estate can use.

All of the houses will be for social rent, with priority given to local residents in the greatest need of a new home.

Cllr Guy Nicholson, Cabinet Member with responsibility for regeneration, said: “Despite the rises in the cost of building new homes which is creating great problems for the wider construction industry in London, Hackney Council is determined to get on with planning, building and delivering the new homes that Hackney needs.

“A big thank you to all the residents who put time aside to help the design team shape what are extraordinary new homes for the estate.”

The nine units will go to Hackney residents most in need. Photograph: Citizens Design Bureau.

The homes – designed by local architects Citizens Design Bureau – will also be the first Hackney to meet the ‘Passivhaus’ standard of energy efficiency, meaning they will use less energy for heating and cooling.

Katy Marks, director at Citizens Design Bureau, told the Citizen: “[The houses are] going to be exceptionally sustainable, and that’s not just good for the planet – it’s also good for household bills.

“The real aim of this, as well, is to make sure that people living in social housing have lower bills – so these houses are really nice to live in, but also affordable to live in.”

Residents living on the estate were encouraged to get involved in the process of shaping what the new development would look like via a series of workshops run by the architects and council. Citizens Design Bureau even created full-scale mock-ups of parts of the properties so residents could see how the plans would fit with the rest of the neighbourhood.

“We’ve done a lot of community engagement,” Marks added. “A lot of care has gone into speaking to people at every stage along the way.

“One thing that we were really keen to do was to make sure we could create something which animated the street and made it feel more safe and more lived in.”

The homes are the first of more than 300 social housing units Hackney Council hopes to build on under-utilised council-owned land and are part-funded by the Mayor of London’s Affordable Home Programme.

The council has plans to replicate the designs in smaller lots around the borough.

Marks continued: “This scheme is unusual because it’s 100 per cent social housing. It’s 100 per cent for the people of Hackney, which is really, really great, and it’s quite unusual.”

Tom Copley, London’s Deputy Mayor for Housing and Residential Development, said: “It’s fantastic that nine brand-new family-sized homes will be built at Nye Bevan Estate in Hackney thanks to a £2.25 million investment through the Mayor of London’s Affordable Homes Programme.

“These sustainable, affordable homes at social rent levels will boost the local community and support the Council’s plans to build more than 300 council homes across the borough as we continue to build a better, fairer and more inclusive city for everyone.”

Around 8,500 households were on the council’s waiting list for social housing as of May 2025 in what officials described at the time as a ‘crisis’.