WHAT? ANOTHER ONE? The famous words of “Brenda from Bristol” spring to mind as news comes of yet another government plan to build more homes to tackle the housing crisis.
The latest plan has a target of building 70,000 social and affordable homes in England over ten years (defined as when the building starts; thirteen years if timed to when the homes are built and available to let). That would be a great advance – if it happens – but it is a disappointing plan.
•Around 380,000 people (including 177,530 children) are homeless in England: 70,000 new homes would house around one in five homeless people. As homeless people live in households, more than one in five people could be housed, but demand is likely to increase over the next ten years, so it still leaves housing in short supply.
•There were around 1.34 million households on social housing waiting lists in March 2025. The 70,000 new homes will make just a tiny dent in the waiting lists.
•Only 60% of these homes will be let at social rents. The others will be let at “affordable” rents, where “affordable” means “very high”. The high cost of “affordable” and private (“market”) rents, together with the high cost of shared ownership, means that these options are out of reach for many households.
•Ten years is a long time to be on a housing waiting list. A five year old who is in temporary accommodation will be about to take their GCSEs when the last of these homes is built.
Burnham has allocated nearly £10 billion on the new housing – having earlier allocated some £6 billion to London. Developers are saying that they cannot afford to build estates which are 100% social homes, which is nonsense. All homes are affordable. Those at social rents take a little longer to pay back the capital spent on building homes than affordable rents take. It is not that social homes are “unviable”: they just require a bit more patience for developers and builders, and delay the payment of dividends to shareholders.
Ironically, it is actually new private homes which are hard for developers to sell at the moment. When they talk about schemes being unviable, they often mean that they are risking not being able to sell the private homes which they have built to subsidise the homes for rent.
It had been thought that much of the new money for homes outside London would go to Councils. That has not happened, and most of it will go to housing associations. Housing Associations may be able to build homes faster than Councils (is that a fact or just conjecture?), but they have a shocking record in delivering housing services.
The Tories have criticised Burnham’s plans as unfunded and taking too long. The BBC reported that they had also said that social homes were more expensive to build than homes with other forms of tenure. This all seems rather lame.
In the meantime, Reform UK has announced that under a Reform Government, social housing would be reserved for British nationals, particularly young married couples looking to start a family. That is in line with general national-socialist policies: it didn’t go well last time it was tried.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has said that there is more money to come. Cross your fingers.
●Read more about it: Mayor Lutfur Rahman wins battle for affordable housing Tories launch shocking new racist housing policy