Seven years after Goldsmith Street made history, Lion Green Road’s Stirling Prize win puts council housebuilding back in the spotlight and reopens an older debate about modernist urbanism and the place of the apartment in British housing

The Stirling Prize is often used to make a political statement, and the choice of Mary Duggan Architects and RUFFARCHITECTS’ Lion Green Road comes at a challenging moment for Britain’s housing sector and the stuttering council homes renaissance. Seven years after Mikhail Riches’ Goldsmith Street became the first council housing scheme to win the Stirling, this year’s award once again signals the judges’ support for public sector housing delivery.

It arrives as council housebuilding returns to the top of the political agenda. Prime minister Andy Burnham has pledged the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war era, but delivery figures reveal the scale of the challenge. At the high point in 1953, councils completed nearly 200,000 homes, and even in the late 1970s town halls were building more than 110,000 a year. In 2025, councils directly delivered just 1,970 new-build homes, a figure that has hovered around 2,000 a year for the past decade. Including acquisitions from private developers, the number of newly provided council homes rose to 10,480 in 2024/25.

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