Zero-Bills & Net-Zero New-Build Homes in the UK: A Verified 2026 Catalogue

In December 2024, six households in Exeter moved into homes that came with a promise most buyers never hear: no energy bills. Not smaller bills. None — guaranteed for at least five years, in writing, by the company that would otherwise be sending the invoices.

Those homes are real, and they are not the only ones. A short list of zero-bills homes now exists across the UK, most of them wired the same way: solar panels on the roof, a battery in the utility cupboard, a heat pump instead of a gas boiler, and a tariff that turns all of it into a signed guarantee. The category is young, though, and the marketing runs a long way ahead of the evidence. Developer pages quote savings that nobody has independently measured. "Zero bills" sometimes turns out to be a paid upgrade rather than the standard spec. So this is a catalogue we checked against primary sources — mostly the energy partner's own press releases — with a clear line between what is confirmed and what is still a claim. Where a number wasn't published, we say so instead of guessing.

What "zero bills" and "net zero" actually mean

The two phrases get used interchangeably in property listings. They shouldn't be.

A net-zero home is about carbon: over a year, the building is designed to add roughly nothing to the atmosphere once its own generation is counted. It can still hand you an energy bill. A zero-bills home is a commercial promise about money — you pay nothing for the energy the home uses, for a fixed term, regardless of what happens to the price cap. Almost every zero-bills home is also net-zero-ish by design, but the reverse isn't true. Keep the distinction in your head while you read listings, because sellers won't always keep it for you.

The tech stack

The developments in this catalogue share a hardware signature, and it's worth knowing what to look for on a spec sheet:

• Solar PV on the roof to generate electricity.
• A home battery to store the midday surplus for evening use — this is the part cheaper "eco" homes leave out, and it's the part that makes the numbers work.
• A heat pump (usually air-source) instead of a gas boiler, so heating runs on the same clean electricity.
• Smart control — a meter and software that shift usage to cheap or self-generated power and export the rest.

Solar plus a battery plus a heat pump, designed to run together. That combination is the bar for inclusion here. Solar panels alone, an EV charger, or a generic "EPC A" badge did not get a development onto the list.

How the Octopus guarantee works

Most of the confirmed homes below run on Octopus Energy's Zero Bills standard, and it's the mechanism that makes the promise more than a slogan. The developer builds the home to a specification Octopus signs off — enough generation and storage that, modelled across a normal year, the home can cover its own energy use. In exchange, Octopus guarantees the resident pays nothing for energy for a set term, typically five to ten years. Surplus generation is exported to the grid; the guarantee holds whether or not the household exports enough to "cover" itself, which is what shifts the risk from the buyer to the energy company.

Octopus says it has more than 5,000 homes qualified under the standard as of 2026 and is targeting 100,000 by 2030, with housebuilders including Barratt Redrow, Bellway, Vistry, Persimmon, Verto, Greencore and gs8 signed up. That's the scale of ambition. The number of homes you can actually walk into today is much smaller — which is the gap this catalogue exists to map.

How this differs from the Future Homes Standard

You'll hear "Future Homes Standard" in the same breath as zero bills. They are not the same thing.

The Future Homes Standard is the baseline coming for all new homes in England — designed to cut heating and hot-water carbon by around 75–80% against the old rules, with solar close to standard on new roofs. It's a real improvement, and in a few years it will make solar-and-heat-pump homes ordinary rather than remarkable. But a Future Homes Standard house still sends you an energy bill; it's just a smaller one. A zero-bills home is contractually guaranteed to send you none for the length of the term. When a listing leans on "Future Homes Standard ready," read it as "better than old stock," not "free energy."

How we checked this list

Every development in the verified section below is backed by a source we retrieved and read this pass — in most cases the energy partner's own press release, which is the closest thing to a primary record this market produces. Nine sources were fetched and extracted directly; they're listed at the end.

Here's the standard a development had to clear to be called verified rather than promising:

• The green spec has to beat the baseline. Solar with battery storage, or solar-plus-battery-plus-heat-pump run together, or an accredited zero-bills / measured-Passivhaus performance. EV charging, a bare "EPC A", or Future Homes Standard compliance on their own were not enough.
• The package has to be standard, not an upsell. One Scottish scheme was dropped from an earlier draft the moment we confirmed its zero-bills package was an optional paid extra rather than the standard build — more on that below.
• A real person has to be able to reach it. Built and occupied, under construction with a launch date, or on sale.

Two things we deliberately did not do: we did not invent figures, and we did not smooth over gaps. You'll see the same caveat repeated across the Octopus entries — exact solar capacity (kWp), battery size (kWh), per-plot prices, the named sales phase, and whether the package is standard on every single plot are almost never published. We flag those as unconfirmed every time rather than filling the hole with a plausible guess. A development marked "verified" has a solid spine and itemised gaps. That's a more useful thing to hand a buyer than false confidence.

Verified developments you can look at today

Six developments clear the bar on current evidence. They run from a 113-home flagship down to a six-home social-rent scheme. Read "catalogue" carefully, though: most of these are not a home you can buy this year — one is social rent, two are still under construction with no sales phase named, and only a couple offer a clear open-market route in the near term (the full breakdown is at the end). Where a development isn't for open-market sale, it's the first thing we say in its entry.

Carpenters Yard — Thornwood, Epping, Essex

The flagship. Developer gs8, energy partner Octopus, and the reason it leads the list is the wiring: 113 homes tied into a development-wide microgrid with a centralised battery that shares solar generation between houses, on top of the per-home solar, air-source heat pumps and storage. Octopus called it the UK's largest zero-bills community when it announced the scheme in February 2025.

• Scale and tenure: 113 homes; 35 are affordable rent, the rest a mix the source doesn't fully break down.
• Buyer benefit: Octopus Zero Bills, no energy bills for 5–10 years.
• Status: launched April 2025; first completions expected spring 2026.
• Where to look: the sales site is carpentersyard.com; developer at gs8.co.uk.
• Still to confirm: solar kWp and battery kWh aren't published; nor is the tenure split on the roughly 78 non-affordable homes. One estate-agent listing showed a two-bed at £131,250, but we couldn't confirm that against an authoritative source, so treat it as a single unverified data point, not a price.

Barratt Redrow Zero Bills — Wixams, Bedfordshire

Part of a two-site, 54-home programme Octopus and Barratt Redrow announced in December 2025; this is the 27-home half in Bedfordshire. Solar, home battery and heat pump integrated for the Zero Bills standard, with the guarantee pitched at the full 10 years.

• Status: under construction; first completions expected during 2026.
• Evidence: Octopus press release (22 December 2025), corroborated by trade outlet Elemental (6 January 2026).
• Still to confirm: the named sales phase and buyer link, tenure, prices, and hardware sizes aren't public yet. It's also not confirmed whether all 54 homes across both sites carry the package or only a subset — worth asking the sales office directly.

Barratt Redrow Zero Bills — Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire

The other 27 homes of that same programme, in Gloucestershire — same developer, partner and spec; the same 10-year guarantee; the same open questions. Listed separately because it's a distinct site a buyer would search for by name, not because anything about the spec differs.

Nexa Fields — Exeter, Devon

The Exeter homes from the opening of this piece. Built by Verto Homes for Sovereign Network Group with Octopus, this was the first time Zero Bills reached social-housing residents — six of them moved in on 18 December 2024. The performance headline is genuine: EPC A with a score of 129, described in the source as the highest in the country at publication.

• Access — read this first: these are social rent, not open-market sale. Included because they're occupied, verified and set the performance benchmark, but you can't buy one.
• Green spec: solar, battery and heat pump; Octopus Zero Bills for at least five years.
• Still to confirm: whether the wider development runs beyond this six-home cohort, and the hardware sizes.

Greencore Homes Zero Bills — Launton, near Bicester, Oxfordshire

The one on this list you might actually buy on the open market. Eight Zero Bills homes for private sale sit inside a 65-home mixed-tenure scheme from Greencore Homes, with Octopus as energy partner. The spec is the strongest on paper: solar, home batteries and heat pumps on Passivhaus-principle design, EPC A, low-carbon natural-material construction, and 23% biodiversity net gain.

• Status: under construction; first homes expected autumn 2026.
• Evidence: reported by trade outlet The Intermediary (26 March 2026). This is our one confirmed-but-secondary source in the sale-ready set — we'd want the Greencore/Octopus primary announcement before treating it as bankable.
• Still to confirm: hardware sizes; whether the whole 65-home scheme shares the spec or only those eight units; and a direct developer sales link.

Etopia — Corby, Northamptonshire

The outlier, and the one that doesn't run on Octopus at all. Etopia's 47-unit Corby site (technology partner Samsung) is the most heavily engineered home in the catalogue: solar and battery, both ground-source and air-source heat pumps, mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, and an inter-seasonal "energy earth bank" that stores summer heat for winter.

• Reported performance: EPC A (104–105); an average of around £45 a month in energy cost for a three-bed terrace, with some residents reporting net export to the grid.
• Status: completed and occupied.
• The caveat: every performance figure here is developer-reported, single-source, and undated — the page carries no publication date, and we found no independent verification of the £45-a-month or net-export claims. It's included for the hardware and the occupancy; the numbers want confirming before anyone leans on them.

On the horizon: promising, not yet confirmed

These didn't make the verified list — usually because the site is unnamed, the spec isn't confirmed as standard, or we haven't yet retrieved a primary source. They're a watch list. Don't buy on the strength of this section.

• Prosperity Group, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire — pitched by Octopus as the "world's largest zero-bills site" at 300 homes, mixed tenure, 10-year guarantee. The catch is timing: first homes aren't due until 2028, with no named plots or prices yet. Verified as an announcement, held on delivery.
• Bellway, Bedfordshire — a 130-home commitment in one Octopus source and a "250 from 2024" figure in another. The figures may overlap, the sites aren't named, and standard-vs-optional is unconfirmed. Held until there's a name on it.
• Citu Climate Innovation District, Leeds — around 1,000 timber-frame, gas-free homes to 2030/31, with integrated and community solar. A strong for-sale candidate at real scale, held only because we haven't retrieved a primary source confirming battery storage and measured performance.
• Larkfleet "Grid Neutral" homes, near Peterborough — solar-plus-battery pitched as a standard package with heat pump and MVHR. Promising; the lead is a regional secondary page, so it's held pending developer confirmation.
• ZED Pods — certified zero-operational-carbon homes with solar, battery and a solar-assisted heat pump, but the pipeline is mostly social and affordable, with limited for-sale access.
• Passivhaus benchmarks — Goldsmith Street in Norwich (93 homes, RIBA Stirling Prize 2019, measured bills around £150 a year, 68% below regulations), Marmalade Lane in Cambridge, and Willohaus in Salford. Superb measured performance, but they lack the solar-plus-battery signature and are largely social rent, cohousing resale, or affordable tenure — context and proof that the physics works, not homes you'll find on Rightmove.

A handful of further for-sale leads surfaced during research — among them schemes reported in Essex, Suffolk and West Sussex — but they hadn't been checked against a primary source by the time this draft was written, so they're deliberately left out of the named catalogue until they have been.

Are zero-bills homes worth it?

Probably yes, if the guarantee is real and standard — with three things to check first.

The saving is large but it's the seller's number. Octopus puts the average saving at around £1,800 a year versus a typical home; industry explainers repeat it. It's a credible figure and a genuine reason to look — but it's a modelled average from an interested party, not an independently audited per-home result, and it's the kind of headline this catalogue exists to keep at arm's length. Your saving depends on the house, the tariff and how you live in it.

"Zero bills" can mean "very low bills." The Octopus guarantee is a true zero for the term. Some rival schemes market "zero" while actually meaning a small standing charge or a best-case export scenario. Read the term sheet: how many years, what happens after, and whether it survives you selling the house.

The premium is real, and rarely published. These homes cost more to build, and that shows up in the price — a figure almost none of the developers above disclose per plot. Weigh the premium against the guaranteed saving over the guaranteed term, not against a lifetime of imagined free energy.

One thing worth settling in your own head before you ask any of that: what happens when the guarantee runs out. It isn't a cliff edge. After the five or ten years you still own the solar, the battery and the heat pump outright, and you simply move onto an ordinary tariff — you carry on generating and storing your own power, you just stop being insured against the price of everything else. The saving narrows; it doesn't vanish. Treat the years after the term as low-but-normal running costs rather than a return to a standard bill.

Four questions to take to any developer selling you one: How big is the solar array and the battery, in kWp and kWh? Is the zero-bills package standard on this plot or a paid upgrade? How long is the guarantee, and does it transfer if I sell? And can I see it in writing before I reserve? If the sales office can't answer the first two, you're looking at marketing.

Where you can (and can't) buy one yet

The verified stock clusters in England's middle and south: Essex, Bedfordshire, Gloucestershire, Devon, Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire. Add the held candidates and the reach widens to Cambridgeshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, the Peterborough area, Norfolk, Greater Manchester and Sussex. As a proof of concept, the idea has gone nationwide.

As a place to actually buy, it hasn't — not yet, and not evenly. Of the six verified developments, one is social rent (Nexa Fields), two are still under construction with no sales phase named (the Barratt Redrow pair), and only Launton and, in principle, Carpenters Yard offer a clear open-market route in the near term. And there's a hard geographic gap: we could not confirm a single qualifying, standard-spec, buyer-accessible development in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. One Scottish scheme we looked at, Tranent Grove in North Dundee, turned out to sell zero bills as an optional upgrade rather than the standard build, which is exactly why it isn't on the verified list. If you're house-hunting outside England, the guidance today is blunt: the market hasn't reached you yet.

The short version

The market for zero-bills homes in the UK is early, uneven, and — for the developments in this catalogue — real. Six you can point to today, a longer list worth watching, and one honest rule that will serve you better than any brochure: make the developer put the guarantee, the hardware sizes and the price in writing before you believe the word "zero."

Working out whether your own roof could do some of the same job? Use our solar savings calculator to see what solar and a battery could take off your bills, and compare local solar installers if you'd rather retrofit than move. New to the tech? Start with our guide to solar, batteries and heat pumps.