UK Construction and Law
Portsmouth names a preferred partner for 2,300 homes but defers the development agreement
By Staff Writer | 14 August 2026
The council and ECF have signed a Development and Masterplanning Services Agreement covering 13.25 hectares of brownfield land. The agreement that would actually commit either side to build comes later, and only if viability testing supports it.
Portsmouth City Council announced on 10 August that it has selected ECF as preferred partner for City Centre North, a 13.25 hectare area of brownfield land in the middle of the city with the potential for up to 2,300 homes. The announcement is worth reading for what it does not say as much as for what it does.
What has actually been signed
The instrument in place is a Development and Masterplanning Services Agreement. Under it, the council and ECF will spend the coming months exploring development options and testing viability. The council's own statement then sets the condition plainly: subject to the outcome of that work, the partnership would progress to a Development Agreement, which would formalise the delivery of City Centre North.
That sequencing is the whole of the commercial position. A preferred partner appointment supported by a services agreement buys the council a masterplan, a set of options and an evidence base. It does not bind anybody to build anything, it does not fix a land value, and it does not allocate the cost of abnormals, infrastructure or affordable housing. Those are the terms that will be argued over in the development agreement, and the party with the better evidence base at that point tends to win them.
This partnership is an important next step in making sure we get the development right. By working with ECF, we can thoroughly test the options, build a strong evidence base and explore the best way to bring these plans forward.
Councillor Steve Pitt, Leader of Portsmouth City Council
Preferred partner is a procurement outcome. A development agreement is a construction contract in all but name. Between the two sits a viability test that either side can lose.
Who ECF is, and what that means for covenant
ECF is a partnership between Homes England's National Housing Bank, L&G and Muse. That mix matters to anyone who will later be asked to price work on the scheme, because it puts public capital, institutional investment and a development manager inside one vehicle rather than spread across three contracting parties. ECF has a stated long term target of 17,000 new homes and more than one million square feet of commercial space by 2036, and its current portfolio includes Manor Road Quarter in Canning Town, Stockport 8, Bradford City Village, Smithgate in Wolverhampton, Greyfriars in Northampton and Station Gateway in Stevenage.
Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of ECF, said the partnership was "looking forward to working with Portsmouth City Council over the coming months to explore the site in detail, test what's deliverable here, and build the case for how we might take this forward together". The verbs there are exploratory, and they are the same verbs the council used.
Beyond the housing figure, the published scope includes workspace, leisure uses and more than 240,000 square feet of new public space, including an urban park, together with improved connections between the city centre and the surrounding neighbourhoods. City Centre North is presented alongside the new Portsmouth Business Improvement District as part of a wider programme of investment in the city.
Councillor Pitt was candid that the scheme has taken longer than anyone would have hoped, and framed the delay as having changed what the city needs from its centre. That is a fair reading of a brownfield city centre site in 2026, where retail floorspace assumptions written before the pandemic no longer survive a viability appraisal.
What practitioners should watch for
Three things will decide whether this becomes a job. First, whether the viability testing supports the density implied by 2,300 homes on 13.25 hectares once the public space commitment is held constant. Second, whether the affordable housing proportion is fixed in the development agreement or left to a review mechanism, because a review mechanism transfers market risk to whichever party drafted it badly. Third, the phasing, since a scheme of this size will be procured in packages and the first package sets the pricing benchmark for the rest.
Contractors and consultants approached during the masterplanning period should read their appointments carefully. Work done under a services agreement that never converts into a development agreement is still work done, and whether it is paid for depends on the terms agreed now rather than on the enthusiasm of the announcement.