MHCLG Grant: RenKap wins PropTech Innovation Challenge
RenKap has been named one of the winners of the Geovation PropTech Innovation Challenge, backed by the UK Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).
This recognition underscores our role in tackling one of the UK’s most pressing challenges: unlocking small sites to help meet the national target of 1.5 million new homes. Small sites—often overlooked due to their complexity, fragmentation, and perceived risk—hold significant untapped potential across the UK. Successfully delivering homes on these sites requires new tools, smarter processes, innovation and close collaboration between local authorities, SME developers, and technology partners like RenKap.
Joanna Averley, Chief Planner at MHCLG, underscores the importance of this initiative:
“The PropTech Innovation Challenge demonstrates how targeted innovation can help tackle some of the most pressing challenges in planning and housing. The breadth and quality of solutions proposed reflect the sector’s appetite for change and readiness to co-create scalable solutions that deliver real impact for the 1.5 million homes mission.”
🚀 Introducing the Small Site Accelerator
At the heart of our MHCLG award is the Small Site Accelerator – a new partnership between RenKap and Blocktype designed to transform the early stages of small site development.
Small sites are a critical but underutilised resource. Yet they are often too complex, risky, or expensive to bring forward—especially for SME developers and local authorities operating under tight constraints. The Small Site Accelerator is designed to change that.
Through this partnership, property professionals can take a raw site through to a de-risked and feasibility-ready stage in a fraction of the time and cost that it currently takes – making it faster, easier and cheaper to quickly analyse and unlock small sites for development.
Here’s how it works:
- RenKap enables users to streamline how they tender, procure, and manage site surveys—bringing all survey outcomes and data into one place, so they can quickly assess whether a site is a go or no-go.
- Blocktype takes the RenKap site constraint data, merges it with local planning policy and user input (e.g. unit types), and instantly generates feasibility outputs including layouts, massing, and accommodation schedules.
This combined approach significantly reduces the cost, time, and complexity of early-stage development and provides a scalable solution for small sites across the UK.
🏗️ Our Partners
We’re proud to be working with a group of forward-thinking local authorities to test and validate the model:
Lambeth, Lewisham, Bristol City Council, Wigan Council
🌍 Why It Matters
In the 1970s, the UK consistently delivered over 300,000 homes a year—driven by a combination of active local authority housebuilding and a vibrant SME developer market, often working on small infill sites.
Today, the landscape has shifted. Housing delivery is dominated by a small number of large housebuilders whose business models depend on large sites with long build-out rates. As a result, small sites—despite being plentiful—are often overlooked due to their complexity, cost, and risk.
The Small Site Accelerator helps reverse this trend. By using technology to reduce the friction of early-stage delivery, we’re enabling SME developers and local authorities to bring forward small sites that would otherwise be left behind—unlocking housing at scale.
🔮 What’s Next
This milestone is just the beginning. In the months ahead, RenKap and its partners will:
- Test and refine the Small Site Accelerator in live projects
- Capture data to evidence time, cost, and risk savings
- Engage developers, policymakers, and communities to ensure the solution meets real-world needs
- Integrate fully with Blocktype via API, enabling seamless handover from site constraints to instant feasibility studies
- Complete detailed case studies per Local Authority to demonstrate outcomes
Our aim is to scale the Small Site Accelerator nationally—enabling faster, smarter, and more equitable housing delivery. By March 2026, we’re launching a proven, replicable model ready for wider rollout.
We look forward to collaborating with partners who share our mission to unlock small sites and make a lasting difference to communities across the UK.
Want to join the Small Site Accelerator?
We’re building a platform to make developing small sites simpler, faster, and more effective. Be the first to know when it launches — join our waitlist today. Just click the link below to sign up and get early access.