From Lockdown Idea to a Quarter-Billion Dream

Building Sky-House Co

Sky-House Co is now four or five years old, depending on where you measure our official start.

The idea to bring everything in-house came just before Lockdown 1 in March 2020, at the point I sold CODA. It was a moment of change, uncertainty, and—looking back—unexpected opportunity.

By the summer of 2020, we had brought construction fully in-house to complete our first development at Waverley, rescuing the project from the ashes of a design-and-build contractor administration. In January 2021, we kicked off our first fully in-house builds at Oughtibridge Mill, Waverley 02 and Fox Valley.

Fast forward to today.

Sky-House has now:

Completed close to £60 million of projects across the region
Won nine awards
Grown to a 30-strong team, all headquartered in Sheffield

We have delivered 155 homes across five new neighbourhoods, alongside the wonderful new hotel and restaurant for JÖRO.

Right now, we have:

255 homes in build, plus seven commercial spaces across four new neighbourhoods
132 homes and two commercial spaces in planning and legals across three further neighbourhoods
Two more neighbourhoods close to agreeing terms, delivering 170 homes and seven commercial spaces

If we pull this off, that’s 712 homes and 17 commercial spaces in total.

That would take us to a quarter of a billion pounds in turnover.

Dare we dream?

Achieving This Against the Odds

All of this has been delivered against the most challenging economic backdrop since the Great Financial Crash:

Construction inflation of around 30 percent
New building regulations and the Building Safety Act adding a further 10 percent
The fastest base-rate rises in decades
A brand-new internal construction team
A full pivot to zero-gas homes
One of the worst periods for housing starts and completions since the 1970s

Put in that context, our short history looks even more meaningful.

Our Partners and Supporters

None of this happens alone.

We have been incredibly fortunate to work with supportive, values-aligned partners, including Homes England and Mark Harrington, who have supported us from the very beginning.

We have worked closely with Ian and Robert at the St Brides Partnership, Oliver Coppard and the SYMCA team, the Directorship at Sheffield City Council, and the planners at Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council—particularly Lisa, Sandra and Mark for truly “getting it” from Day 1.

We are equally grateful to the planners and urban design teams at Sheffield, including Michael, Eleanor, Jacob and colleagues.

Our subcontractors and consultants are almost entirely local SMEs, chosen deliberately to strengthen the regional economy. Corporate is rarely our default.

Thanks too to Harworth, Barratt and Placefirst.

The Reality of Building a Business

There have been trials and tribulations. Tears with stress—and tears with joy. Wins and losses. Hard lessons learned.

We have built, from scratch, a house-building and place-making business tackling some of the hardest brownfield sites in the country. Not only contaminated, but often unfavourably steep (thank you, Sheffield).

We are confident that 2026 and beyond will be less hard, but never easy—and we will relish the challenge to do more, and do it even better.