Welsh government allocates extra £10m for affordable housing

Jayne Bryant, cabinet secretary for housing and local government, said the extra funding marked a culmination of work begun last year, when she first took on the role from predecessor Julie James.

Ms Bryant wrote to providers asking them to identify schemes that may not be in their main development programmes but could be completed within the Senedd term if funding is secured.

She told Inside Housing that the extra funding was “very exciting, but we do know that there’s still more to do”.

“We’ve got our target, but we also know we need to build more affordable homes more generally in Wales, that will be after that date [the end of this Senedd term] as well.”

The government’s 20,000-home goal has been under significant pressure, with thousands of homes yet to be delivered.

The latest government figures showed that 8,933 affordable homes have been delivered against the target, as of December 2024.

“We’ve had a real, granular focus on what’s holding things up, but it’s also about knowing what’s in the pipeline for people,” Ms Bryant said.

She added that the Affordable Housing Taskforce, headed up by Lee Waters, has been meeting weekly to find ways of unlocking development.

Ms Bryant also announced that the 2025-26 Transitional Accommodation Capital Programme will reopen with an indicative allocation of £100m.

“We have listened to feedback on the first three years of delivery, and this early announcement is intended to provide advance notification to the sector that the programme will be reopening for applications early in the new financial year,” she said.

In December last year, the Welsh government announced an extra £10m for social housing as part of an additional funding package for councils.