Avant has started work on Houghton Place, a £23.5m scheme of 104 homes on High Street in Great Houghton, Barnsley. As Place Yorkshire reported, completion is expected in summer 2027.
Started beats approved
We keep making this point and it keeps earning its place. Planning permission is cheap and reversible. Consents lapse, sites get traded, schemes sit undelivered for years while the market takes the blame.
Work starting is different. Money is committed, a contractor is on site, and the scheme is far harder to walk away from.
Barnsley has had a run of approvals recently, including 340 homes across Keepmoat and Vistry schemes in August. Great Houghton is one converting into actual building.
Great Houghton
Great Houghton is a former pit village east of Barnsley, in the old South Yorkshire coalfield. Places like it lost their economic anchor in the 1980s and have relied since on distribution, manufacturing and out-commuting.
A hundred and four homes in a village that size is significant. Without new housing the population ages, the school roll falls, and the shops that survive on local trade close. The counter-argument is the usual one about school places, GP lists and road capacity, and it deserves a factual answer rather than a dismissal.
The number to ask for
£23.5m for 104 homes is about £226,000 each, covering land, build and everything else.
The published detail doesn’t give the affordable proportion. In a district where average earnings sit below the national figure, that’s the number that decides whether this is housing supply or housing supply for people who already have options.
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