Chancellor pledges extra £500m for social homes in budget as part of the Treasury’s plans £5bn total investment in housing supply and a reduction in discounts under the right-to-buy scheme.
The extra £500m for social homes in the budget, in what appears to be a compromise with the housing department, led by Angela Rayner, over the scale of ambition required in the sector.
The promise of an additional £500m for the government’s affordable homes programme (AHP) is intended to add up to 5,000 extra social homes. The Treasury said it will bring total property investment in housing supply to £5bn.
Chancellor pledges extra £500m for social homes in budget
The National Housing Federation, the Home Builders Federation and the estate agent Savills have said the government will fall short of its ambition to build 1.5m new homes during this parliament by nearly half a million without “significant government support for social housebuilding and first-time buyers”.
In a report earlier this month, the bodies said: “There is likely to be a shortfall of up to 95,000 new homes a year on average.”
The package is an accommodation between Rayner and Reeves after tensions over how heavily to invest in social homes, which the former sees as crucial to alleviating the housing crisis. The government is committed to building 1.5m homes over the current parliament.
The next five-year spending review, to be announced in parallel with the budget, will set out subsequent commitments to the AHP.
The Treasury announcement promised this would “lay the foundations for the manifesto commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation”, with a particular focus on social rent homes.
There were 1.3m households on social housing waiting lists in England as of March last year.