IN Brief:
- Last Mile said it has reached 1 million live connections across electricity, gas, water, wastewater, and heat since 2002.
- The company also said it has an order book of 710,000 new utility connections in design, build, or adoption.
- Recent schemes include EV charging infrastructure, heat networks, and large mixed-use developments.
Last Mile has reached 1 million live utility connections across electricity, gas, water, wastewater, and heat networks, marking a significant milestone for a business model that has become more prominent in British infrastructure delivery. The company said the figure covers residential, commercial, and industrial developments connected since 2002, with the millionth connection delivered at a service station in the West Midlands supplying rapid EV charging infrastructure.
The company also said it has an order book of 710,000 new utility connections in design, build, or adoption. That figure points to sustained demand for multi-utility delivery across new developments and major regeneration schemes, particularly where developers are looking for coordinated delivery across multiple network types rather than separate engagements for electricity, gas, water, wastewater, and heat.
Last Mile’s model combines design, build, ownership, and long-term asset adoption. Developers increasingly value that integration where utility infrastructure needs to be phased around build schedules, financing structures, and mixed-use site requirements. The connection market is no longer confined to energising straightforward residential plots. It now extends across heat networks, transport electrification, commercial regeneration, and large urban expansion programmes with longer operating lives and more complex interfaces between utility systems.
Among the schemes highlighted by the company are Welborne garden village in Hampshire, where it is delivering a water-source heat network using reservoir water to heat and cool up to 6,000 homes, the Michaelston College redevelopment in Cardiff, and Brabazon in Bristol. These projects illustrate the way utility delivery is converging across heat, power, and water within the same developments, particularly where low-carbon infrastructure is being designed in from the outset rather than added later.
The West Midlands EV charging site chosen for the millionth connection is also a useful marker of how connection work is changing. Transport electrification often draws attention to the visible asset — the charger, the forecourt, the vehicles — but the underlying value sits in grid access, network design, capacity allocation, and long-term asset management. Those same disciplines also sit underneath heat networks, urban extensions, and mixed-use regeneration, which is why the utility connection market has become more strategically important.
Investor-backed ownership models have helped support that shift. Last Mile said its growth is backed by Infracapital and Macquarie Asset Management, allowing it to finance assets as well as deliver them. That is particularly relevant where network infrastructure has to be installed ahead of full revenue realisation, as is often the case with phased developments, new towns, district heat systems, and charging locations tied to future traffic growth.
Britain’s wider infrastructure agenda is pushing more projects into exactly those categories. Heat networks, high-density mixed-use development, fleet electrification, and large strategic housing schemes all require earlier and more coordinated utility planning than conventional developments did. As that continues, businesses that can finance, deliver, and operate multiple utility layers under one structure are likely to remain more visible across the connection market.
Last Mile has published further information on its projects and services here.