Government details housebuilding plans

The government has set a target of building 300,000 new social and affordable homes through the Social and Affordable Homes Programme, backed by £39 million announced in the recent Spending Review.

Britain is facing a housing crisis, with families, including over 165,000 children, stuck in temporary accommodation without a proper place of residence to call home. The new target dictates that at least 60 per cent of homes will be for social rent linked to local incomes, which would deliver around 180,000 homes for social rent. This is six times more than the decade up to 2024.

Alongside this, a longtime plan named ‘Delivering a Decade of Renewal for Social and Affordable Housing’ will be published today (2nd July 2025), and will set out a roadmap for how the government will deliver the biggest boost to social and affordable housing in a generation. The last five years programme (2021-26) delivered an average of £2.3 billion a year, meaning that the government will be spending almost double this on affordable housing investment by the end of this Parliament (£4 billion in 2029-30).

This plan consists of five steps the government have pledged to take: deliver the biggest boost to grand funding in a generation, rebuild the sector’s capacity to borrow and invest in new and existing supply, establish an effective and stable regulatory regime, reinvigorate council housebuilding, and forge a renewed partnership with the sector to build at scale. Homes Englabnd will be in charge of delivering most of the funding, with up to 30 per cent of it (up to £11.7 billion over the ten years) supporting housing delivery from the Greater London Authority.

Furthermore, a new long-term ten-year settlement for social housing rents will be introduced from April 2026 to provide the social housing sector with the certainty they need to reinvest in existing and new housing stock.

Additionally, the Decent Homes Standard will be modernised to drive living standards of millions housing tenants up, and the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards will be implemented for the first time in the social housing sector.

Deputy prime minister and housing secretary Angela Rayner said: “We are seizing this golden opportunity with both hands to transform this country by building the social and affordable homes we need, so we create a brighter future where families aren’t trapped in temporary accommodation and young people are no longer locked out of a secure home.

“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.

“What’s why I am urging everyone in the social housing sector to step forward with us now to make this vision a reality, to work together to turn the tide on the housing crisis together and deliver the homes and living standards people deserve through our Plan for Change.”