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Labour pledges £75bn programme to build 150,000 affordable homes a year
Labour has pledged to pump £75bn into housing over five years if it wins December’s election, promising “the biggest council and social housing programme in decades”.
The party’s manifesto, which launches on Thursday, will confirm plans to earmark half the £150bn Social Transformation Fund announced by shadow chancellor John McDonnell earlier this month for housing.
The money will go towards building at least 150,000 new social homes a year within five years – with 100,000 of these to be delivered by councils and the rest by housing associations.
The 100,000 council homes would represent an increase in council housebuilding of more than 3,500% to become the biggest programme since shortly after World War II, Labour claimed.
Official statistics published today show that 57,485 affordable homes were completed in 2018/19. Of these, 82% were built by housing associations and only 11% were built by local authorities, with 6,287 for social rent.
England has not seen more than 150,000 council and housing association homes delivered since 1967.
Labour’s investment plan has been welcomed by a number of bodies across the social housing sector.
Kate Henderson, chief executive of the National Housing Federation (NHF), said the proposals would be “a real game-changer for social housing” and called it the “type of investment needed to fix the housing crisis”.
Terrie Alafat, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Housing, said: “We think the scale of Labour’s proposals are a welcome step in ending our housing crisis.”
Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, described the plan as “transformational for housing in this country” and said that building homes at this scale would do more than any other single measure to end the housing emergency.
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Inside Housing understands that Labour’s £75bn will include Housing Revenue Account (HRA) borrowing by councils, meaning it would not be purely grant funding. Direct comparisons with the Conservative government’s current programme are therefore not possible – but the investment for social homes would be far higher than the £9bn available for affordable housing grant through the present five-year cycle.
The planned homes would be built to “cutting-edge design and green standards” similar to the Stirling Prize-winning Goldsmith Street development in Norwich, Labour said. It also repeated promises made in a policy document published in April 2018 to scrap the definition of ‘affordable’ housing used by the Conservatives and make the term based on local incomes.
A Labour source told Inside Housing that shared ownership would be part of the mix but that the party is also looking at other low-cost ownership models, including those for discounted sale and prices linked to income.
A cross-party commission assembled by housing charity Shelter concluded earlier this year that 155,000 new social homes a year are required over the next two decades. Labour delegates voted unanimously to adopt this recommendation as policy at the party conference.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “I am determined to create a society where working-class communities and young people have access to affordable, good-quality council and social homes.
“Everyone knows someone affected by the housing crisis. Labour is offering real change to fix it.”
Shadow housing secretary John Healey added: “The next Labour government will kick-start a housing revolution, with the biggest investment in new council and social homes this country has seen for decades.”
Labour’s announcements came a day after the Liberal Democrats released their manifesto, which promised to build at least 100,000 homes for social rent a year. The Conservatives are yet to publish their manifesto.
