Angela Rayner has set out plans to build around 300,000 affordable homes with the £39bn of funding she secured from the spending review.
The Deputy Prime Minister and housing secretary adds that at least 60% of homes will be for social rent, linked to local incomes, which would mean delivering around 180,000 homes for social rent. This figure is six times higher than the decade up to 2024.
The housing department adds: “Living standards for millions of social housing tenants will also be driven up under new plans to update and modernise the Decent Homes Standard, which will be extended to privately rented homes for the first time, and minimum energy efficiency standards will be implemented for the first time in the social housing sector.”
The department will also lay out “transformative changes” to Right to Buy and other measures to protect local council housing stocks, under the Social and Affordable Homes Programme announced during last month’s spending review.
Rayner says: “With investment and reform, this government is delivering the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation, unleashing a social rent revolution, and embarking on a decade of renewal for social and affordable housing in this country.”
Housing agency Homes England will be responsible for delivering the majority of the funding, with up to 30% of funding — up to £11.7bn over the 10 years — being used to support housing delivery from the Greater London Authority in the capital.
The housing department adds that the Social and Affordable Homes Programme will offer “more certainty for developers” to invest in housebuilding for the future, compared to the previous five-year £12.3bn Affordable Homes Programme.
It says the Affordable Homes Programme averaged £2.3bn of spending a year, while the department’s new plan will ramp up to spend £4bn a year by the end of this Parliament.
The government will set out a new 10-year settlement for social housing rents, which will be introduced next April “to provide the social housing sector with the certainty they need to reinvest in existing and new housing stock”.
