Who has built the most social rent in the past 10 years?

But across the decade, we can see Scotland as a whole has consistently built more social rent homes. When you add in the abolition of the Right to Buy in Scotland in 2014, which has staunched the loss of social rent homes, you are left with a quite different picture than the rest of the UK.

“We’re still looking to understand the impact of the most recent Scottish Budget,” Mr Henderson says. Despite those cuts, he says: “Our aim over the next 10 years is to build even more than we did in the last 10 years. Our business plan supports that, [although] we will need to work closely in partnership with local government and the Scottish government.”

L&Q is our second-biggest social rent builder, and it is the association that built the most social homes in England. Only 11% of the 31,139 homes L&Q has completed in 10 years were social rent. Yet, the landlord has such a large development programme that it still holds the top spot, adding 3,549 social rent homes.

Jacqueline Esimaje-Heath, growth director at L&Q, talks about social rent as a core part of the landlord’s social purpose. However, she does acknowledge that success has been limited.

At the start of our decade of consideration, 47% of all new homes built by the Biggest Builders were social rent; it was only 17% last year. And this is after then-prime minister Theresa May injected new grant funding for social rent in 2017 with a £2bn package. Homes England also launched strategic partnerships the next year, which enabled more social rent homes to be built.

It was around this time that Bromford, another one of our top 10, merged with Severn Vale Housing and kicked off a new push for social rent. Amanda Swann, development director at the landlord, notes: “I think we delivered something like 19% of our programme as social rent [at the time of the merger]. And I think last year, it was something like 44%.”

90,000
Social rent homes a year that Build Social is calling for

4,320
Social rent homes delivered in 10 years by Wheatley

17%
Biggest Builders’ 2022-23 completions which were for social rent

Another development was the creation of the London Affordable Rent (LAR) tenure in the capital in 2016. We discussed, but decided not to include, London Affordable Rent homes within our data. The tenure was created by London mayor Sadiq Khan and caps rent. LAR is low-cost rental housing, but it is still generally higher than social rent, which is based on a ‘formula’ set by the government including the relative value of the property, relative local income levels and the size of the home.

It seems likely that LAR will play a role in the delivery of low-cost social housing going forward. If we look at L&Q, we can see the extent: the association built 336 social rent homes in 2022-23 and then 312 at LAR.

The changes in grant over the past 10 years have left landlords with a quandary. “There’s desperately still a need going forward to have social rented housing,” says Ms Esimaje-Heath from L&Q. But she adds: “It does limit the amount of affordable housing that can be delivered. Do we house as many people as affordably as we can? Or do we provide the most affordable housing? Because they’re two different numbers.”

Build Social

Looking forward, Inside Housing’s Build Social campaign is calling for 90,000 new social rent homes a year in England, 7,700 in Scotland and 4,000 in Wales. Housing secretary Michael Gove has put a figure of 30,000 on the table.

But Gerraint Oakley, executive director of growth and development at Platform Housing Group, another of our top 10 social rent builders, notes: “It’s great to have aspirations… I am a massive advocate of doing that.

To calculate which housing associations built the most social rent in the past 10 years, Inside Housing dug back through the results of our annual Biggest Builders survey.

Each year, we send a survey to the biggest housing associations in the UK with detailed questions about their development – including the number of homes completed and started, and what tenure they are.

From this, we have pulled together our 10-year numbers, starting in 2013-14 and ending in 2022-23, the last full year for which we have data.

Where housing associations have merged, to the best of our ability, we have included data from the legacy organisations. However, it is possible that some data is missing here if some legacy businesses did not supply data.

The online version of this story will include a year-by-year breakdown of the top 10.

But you can’t just do it through a desire to do it. It’s got to be funded, it’s got to be supported.”

Grant rates are not the only thing to have changed in the past decade. We also have to throw in the economy, Brexit, the coronavirus pandemic, inflation, and changes in the political appetite for building social rent as different configurations of the Conservative government have risen and fallen.

Tom Titherington, chief investment and development officer at Sovereign Network Group (SNG), brings up yet another factor: the impact of government subsidy into the commercial housing market, primarily through the Help to Buy policy.

“Policymakers made a choice to maintain a level of first-time buyers into the market – it’s a shrinking sales market anyway, in a shrinking production market – rather than put it into some form of affordable housing provision,” Mr Titherington says. “The alternative for policymakers would have been more investment into affordable housing, recognising that housing is part of the infrastructure of the country.”

(SNG’s merger took place after our 10-year timeframe, but legacy organisation Sovereign comes seventh with 2,694 social rent completions.)

“I think that housing associations have done well,” Mr Titherington adds. “But they’ve really been driven into the cross-subsidy model, which is a trap in itself. And so a lot of the stuff that you can see now is larger housing associations having a significant pipeline, having been encouraged to stretch their balance sheets to invest in all of this. People have had to take a development risk and they’ve become developers, as opposed to developing landlords – and the two things are different.”

“You haven’t got the subsidy to enable you to do that large scale without cross-subsidy; it’s inevitably going to take your eye off the condition of the existing assets,” he adds.

October 2010 – Inside Housing’s front page predicts “the end of social housing”, after chancellor George Osborne’s Spending Review announced only £4.4bn for affordable housing, compared with £8.4bn in the previous period

2011-2015 – The Affordable Homes Programme introduces affordable rent, which is to be the “principal element of the new supply offer” and sets out the basis for re-letting social rent homes at the new affordable rent, which can be up to 80% of market rent

2014 – The SHOUT campaign is launched to push for more social rent homes to be built

2015 – The chancellor announces there will be four years of rent reductions of 1% a year, hitting the income used by housing associations to finance construction as well as repairs and maintenance

2016 – Sadiq Khan, recently elected London mayor, sets out a new £3.15bn affordable rent programme for the capital, with new capped London Affordable Rent meant to supply “genuinely affordable” social housing in a similar way to social rents, although not using the same formula

2016-2023 – The Shared Ownership and Affordable Homes Programme starts with £7.7bn to be invested, with the focus meant to be on shared ownership homes

2017 – Prime minister Theresa May announces another £2bn for affordable and social rented housing

2018 – Homes England launches strategic partnerships with housing providers

2021-26 – The £12bn Affordable Homes Programme is expected to deliver 33,350 properties for social rent, out of a total of 180,000

July 2023 – Housing secretary Michael Gove says he would like to see 30,000 new social homes built per year

August 2023 – Inside Housing launches the Build Social campaign, calling for 90,000 social homes to be delivered

This takes us to one of the major factors limiting social rent development today: the need for associations to spend far more on repairs to existing homes.

Phil Andrew, chief executive of Orbit (which built the sixth most social rent homes in the past 10 years), talks to Inside Housing shortly after he had worked on the landlord’s plans up to 2030. This will see Orbit build 2,500 to 3,500 homes by the end of this decade.

However, Mr Andrew notes: “Getting the financials to work at the same time as repair costs are up 20%; that mould condensation obligations are still coming in; Decent Homes 2 might be coming along; EPC [Energy Performance Certificate] C by 2030; net zero by 2050. The question from the board is, ‘Can you afford it?’”

The associations Inside Housing spoke to say the next government must invest more in building social rent. Development directors want the next government to recognise the financial strains on associations, from repairs bills and fire safety, to decarbonisation and the aftermath of inflation and caps on rental income. These are costs landlords must bear, but they are putting the next 10 years of social rent development at risk.

Alison Inman, who was one of the founders of the SHOUT campaign, points out: “You can only build with money, and we’ve maxed out the housing association credit card – at a cost to standards [of existing homes].” She also notes that keeping with the status quo means spending £1.7bn a year on temporary accommodation, “which is by a country mile the most horrible and the most expensive way to house people”.

Subsidy models need to change – many are keen to explore new ways this can be done. Mr Titherington at SNG, for example, brings up infrastructure grants or de-risking projects through guarantees as alternatives to, or additions to, a massive increase in grant funding. Multiple people bring up reform of the planning system.

There is also a risk, as Peabody’s Mr Jenkins says, if the government does not step in to change things. Starts on new homes are plummeting, he says, both by private developers and social landlords.

“We are on the cusp of losing capacity and capability to develop as a sector if we fail to fix some of the structural issues with the sector’s finances, and quickly,” Mr Jenkins warns. “It will be an almighty challenge to recreate that capability and build back the output of new homes at a run rate that stands any chance of meeting demand.”

For all political parties to commit to funding a substantial programme of homes for social rent in their manifestos at the next general election. This includes:

● 90,000 social rented homes a year over the next decade in England.
● 7,700 social rented homes a year in Scotland.
● 4,000 social rented homes a year in Wales.

Inside Housing commits to:

● Work to amplify the voices of people who need social housing, including families living in temporary housing and overcrowded conditions.

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How much did English housing providers spend on repairs and maintenance in 2022-23? Jess McCabe looks through their financial records to find out 

Who has built the most social rent in the past 10 years?
Jess McCabe delves into the archives of our Biggest Builders data to find out which housing associations have built the most social rent homes

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For the second year running, Inside Housing names the 50 councils in Britain building the most homes. But is the rug about to be pulled on council development plans? Jess McCabe reports

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Inside Housing’s annual survey reveals the salaries and other pay of the chief executives of more than 160 of the biggest housing associations in the UK, along with the current gender pay gap at the top of the sector. Jess McCabe reports

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