Double win for Woodgate at 2025 Planning Awards

We’re celebrating a double success at the recent 2025 Planning Awards, with our flagship Woodgate development in Pease Pottage, West Sussex picking up Best Housing Scheme (500+ homes) and the coveted Editor’s Choice Award at the ceremony.

The Planning Awards have acknowledged the transformative power of planning and placemaking in the housebuilding and construction industries for over a decade. This year’s awards continued this tradition, showcasing outstanding work in areas such as housing, conservation, urban design, infrastructure, partnerships, regeneration and law.

Judges for the Planning Awards highlighted our speedy delivery of the primary school and other community spaces at Woodgate as particularly notable, while also recognising how our commitment to building thriving, connected places shines through at the development. One of the judges remarked how Woodgate is a great example of how a housing scheme can not only fit in with a beautiful area but also enhance the lives of the people living in and around new homes.

These reasons made it the most highly rated entry by the award judges of all the winning schemes at this year’s awards, leading to the Editor’s Choice glory. The Planning Awards are judged by an expert panel of over 30 practitioners and supported by the Planning Officers Society, which represents public sector planners. This year, nearly 200 projects and companies were submitted to the awards, with 131 of these being shortlisted and 29 picking up awards.

Commenting on the 2025 Planning Awards success, our Chief Executive Officer Rob Boughton said: “Winning these two categories at this year’s Planning Awards is fantastic recognition of our aim to build homes and create communities that stand the test of time. We prioritised delivering the village green, school and other community infrastructure and green space alongside the completion of the first homes at the development, ensuring the new community had the facilities and amenities it deserved as early as possible. Every time I visit Woodgate, people are using the shop and café, playing in the park and walking dogs around the lake or across the green, which makes me immensely proud of the genuine community that has formed there.”

Speaking at the awards ceremony, the Editor of Planning magazine Richard Garlick added: “It is great to be able to highlight a large housing development where essential supporting infrastructure was delivered as the first homes were being handed over, rather than years after the last resident moved in.”

Woodgate is an award-winning development of 619 homes, delivered in partnership with Abri. As well as the high-quality homes, the scheme features a community café run by St Catherine’s Hospice, with all profits going towards the charity’s vital services delivered at its on-site therapeutic care facility. Other amenities at Woodgate include a community shop managed and operated by residents with support from charity Plunkett UK and a state-of-the-art primary school. A large village green is at the heart of the development, while play areas, trails, pathways and cycle routes linking to the neighbouring 370-acre Tilgate Forest are spread throughout.

We expect to finish all construction works at Woodgate in Autumn 2025, with less than 10 homes left to buy at the development.