SNG has exchanged contracts for 82 social rent homes at Brent Cross Town, residents in from 2029. Barnet lets 650 social homes a year; Band 4 waits 34 years.
Another 82 social rent homes are going into Brent Cross Town. The housing association SNG says it has exchanged contracts with the developer Related Argent to build them on the last plot of the Market Quarter, and that people are likely to move in from 2029 (SNG, 17 August 2026).
They will not touch the sides of the queue they are meant to serve.
Every one of the 82 will be let at social rent, and every one will be allocated to a household on Barnet Council’s housing needs register. Barnet’s own assessment of that register, published this year, says the council would need an additional 2,100 suitable affordable homes to place all the households it has already banded (Temporary Accommodation Reduction Plan 2026-2030). The 82 homes are about 4% of that gap, and they are three years away.
What is actually being built
SNG’s announcement is specific about the homes. All 82 are apartments, and they sit on the final plot in the Market Quarter, the third phase of the £8 billion scheme Related Argent is delivering with Barnet Council. The plot fronts the planned Neighbourhood Square.
The mix, in SNG’s own description:
- around a third will be three-bedroom homes, aimed at families
- the rest will be one and two-bedroom apartments
- every home gets private outdoor space, a balcony or a terrace
- around 10% are designed to be wheelchair accessible
- ground-floor amenity gardens are reserved for SNG residents
- all homes connect to a gas-free district heating and cooling network, run on air source heat pumps, electric boilers and thermal stores
The homes were unlocked by funding from the Greater London Authority’s Affordable Homes Programme 2021-2026, and they are secured through a Section 106 agreement, the planning mechanism that ties affordable housing to a permission.
SNG is already building 50 social rent homes on the site. These 82 take its total across Brent Cross Town to 132. A further 120 are managed by L&Q. That is 252 social rent homes on a development that will eventually hold 6,700 across 180 acres, along with three schools, eight public squares, 50 acres of green space and 3 million sq ft of workspace.
Councillor Ross Houston, Barnet’s cabinet member for homes and regeneration, said providing affordable housing “including homes for families across the borough, remains a key priority for the council”. Tom Copley, the Deputy Mayor for Housing, called the homes “much needed housing in the area”.
The queue these homes join
Barnet publishes the arithmetic itself, and it is bleak. In a typical year only around 650 social housing properties in the borough become available to let. In practice only households in the top two priority bands get an offer at all.
The council modelled what a household joining the back of each queue in June 2025 could expect to wait. These are its own figures:
| Band | Studio / 1-bed | 2-bed | 3-bed | 4+ bed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Band 1 and direct offers | 8 months | 8 months | 10 months | 10 months |
| Band 2 | 2 years | 10 months | 2 years | 15 years |
| Band 3 | 7 years | 10 years | 13 years | 24 years |
| Band 4 | 23 years | 19 years | 23 years | 34 years |
Averaged across Bands 3 and 4, the wait in June 2025 was 19 years and 1 month, once lettings to households moved off regeneration sites are stripped out.
The pressure behind those numbers is money as much as bricks. The average nightly cost Barnet has to pay for a unit of emergency temporary accommodation rose from £2,131 in January 2023 to £8,292 in July 2025, an increase of nearly 300% in 30 months.
What it means for you
If you are on Barnet’s housing register. These homes will not be let before 2029, and they will be let through the council’s existing Housing Allocation Scheme, not through SNG or Related Argent directly. Nothing about this announcement changes your band or your position. If your circumstances have changed, medically or through overcrowding, updating your application is the only lever that moves a band.
If you need an accessible home. Around 10% of the 82, so roughly eight homes, are being designed as wheelchair accessible. Barnet says more than sixty banded households currently need a partially or fully accessible property, and that it needs to deliver about thirty suitable properties a year to 2030 to keep up. This scheme contributes about a quarter of one year’s requirement.
If you are a family needing three bedrooms. Around a third of the 82 are three-bedroom, which is a better family share than most private schemes produce. Set against it: a Band 3 household waiting for a three-bedroom home was looking at 13 years in June 2025, and a Band 4 household at 23.
If you live near the site. Work is already underway on the wider Market Quarter. Construction traffic and hoarding around the Neighbourhood Square plot will run for years, not months, on SNG’s own 2029 timetable.
You can check what else is being decided near you on our Barnet planning applications page, and what homes are actually selling for on our Barnet house prices page.
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