Social rent construction significantly drops in decade

New figures released by the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government have revealed that the number of new homes built for social rent has fallen by almost four-fifths in a decade.

With only 6,463 homes built in England for social rent last year, down from almost 30,000 a decade ago, the Labour Party has argued that, at the current rate of construction, it would take at least 170 years to house the more than one million families currently on waiting lists.

However, the overall number of properties constructed in England that were classified by the government as affordable rose by 12 per cent last year to 47,355. The majority were built for so-called ‘affordable rent’, where rental costs are capped at 80 per cent of local private sector rents.

John Healey, Shadow Housing Secretary, said: “These figures confirm the disastrous fall in the number of new affordable homes for social rent under the Conservatives. We are now building over 30,000 fewer social rented homes a year than when Labour left office in 2010. At this pace, it will take 170 years just to house the families currently on councils’ waiting lists. After eight years of failure on housing, the next Labour government will build a million low-cost homes, the majority for social rent.”