Preparing for the £39 Billion Funding Round: Why ARK’s Benchmarking Service Is Essential

By Tim West · 17 November 2025

By Tim West and Adrian Redmond, ARK Consultancy

In June’s Spending Review, the Government committed £39billion over ten years to a successor Affordable Homes / Social and Affordable Homes Programme, underpinning a decade of renewal in social housing. This funding window heralds an ambitious bid round, anticipated to open just after the Autumn Budget.

As development teams across housing associations and local authorities prepare, now is the moment to ensure your assumptions, appraisals and performance targets are firmly grounded in robust sector data. ARK’s development benchmarking service offers precisely the evidence base you need to enter the bid round with confidence.

The stakes are high, and the scrutiny will be intense

With the new programme expected to deliver around 300,000 new homes over the decade and at least 60 % earmarked for social rent, the grant round will emphasise not only ambition but deliverability, value for money, and strong financial discipline. Bids will be judged not only on what you propose, but how credible your assumptions are compared with the sector norm.

Development teams will face challenges in:

• calibrating land, build and infrastructure costs in a volatile supply chain environment
• validating sales, cross-subsidy and tenure mix assumptions
• ensuring that hurdle rates, funding gaps and sensitivities are consistent with comparator bodies
• demonstrating to boards, funders and stakeholders that your metrics are defensible and not outliers

Against that backdrop, our benchmarking service is no optional extra, it is a risk mitigation and assurance tool.

As a current benchmarking member, Allan Fisher of Nottingham Community Housing Association, said:

“ARK’s development benchmarking service has proved invaluable in ensuring we align with the market and with our board’s expectations of staying competitive. The process is straightforward, and it provides us with significant insight into development performance across the sector.”

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That kind of confidence is exactly what you need when submitting a bid in a more heavily scrutinised funding round.

What ARK’s benchmarking service delivers

ARK’s development benchmarking service sits within the broader benchmarking offering described on our website, enabling social housing organisations to compare their development assumptions, appraisal metrics and performance to a validated dataset of peers. Key features include:

• anonymised sector-wide comparators across tenure types
• quartile ranges to demonstrate where your assumptions lie
• commentary on trends and cost drivers
• appetite for sensitivity testing, ensuring your bid is stress-tested against realistic scenarios
• alignment with the ARK benchmarking club’s growing membership base, amplifying credibility

Additionally, ARK’s benchmarking ties into our asset management cost benchmarking and data assurance services, giving you a holistic picture of cost pressures and trade-offs across development and maintenance.

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Why now is the right time to act

With the bid window expected shortly after the Autumn Budget, organisations that delay benchmarking risk entering the process without solid comparative evidence. Some immediate benefits of early engagement:

1. Refine your appraisal inputs — catch assumptions that are out of line or perhaps unknowingly aggressive
2. Board and stakeholder assurance — show that your proposal rests on hedged, data-informed metrics
3. Risk identification and mitigation — spot areas where sensitivity is tight and build buffers
4. Competitive edge — confidence in your metrics gives clarity in bid writing and negotiation

From our experience, the earlier you embed benchmarking into the bid cycle, the more time there is to revisit and stress-test assumptions.

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A word from ARK’s leadership

Tim West, Director

“In a funding round of this magnitude, the organisations that succeed will be those that can show rigorous, defensible assumptions from day one. Benchmarking is no longer optional—it is a differentiator. Clients who bring benchmarking into their process early are better able to de-risk bids, reassure their boards and optimise their financial structure.”

Adrian Redmond, Associate Director

“We often see development teams working in siloes, using internal norms or outdated assumptions. By benchmarking against a live, sector-wide dataset, you get a reality check and can generate a more articulate narrative around where you sit and why. That narrative can be just as persuasive to funders and regulators as the financials themselves.”

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Getting started: how ARK can help

• Join the 2025 Development Benchmarking Club — the earlier you enrol, the more time you have to shape assumptions
• Set a tailored benchmarking review focused on your draft appraisals or bid templates
• Work with ARK to stress test your bid model, exploring downside sensitivities and fallback positions
• Use benchmarking outputs in your board and audit reviews to strengthen internal buy-in

If you’d like to discuss bespoke benchmarking support ahead of the 2025 bid round, we’d be pleased to arrange a scoping call. The grace between now and bid launch is a limited window — but that window is precisely the time when good benchmarking delivers greatest value.

Let’s help your bid stand apart on credibility, realism and sector alignment.

Tim West & Adrian Redmond
ARK Consultancy

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