Housing secretary, Angela Rayner, will reportedly receive close to £1billion in a bid to double the amount of council homes delivered each year.
It is believed that the chancellor, Rachel Reeves has agreed to add the additional funding to the Affordable Homes Programme ahead of next week’s budget, with the reported figure believed to be between £500million and £1billion which will be released over the next 18 months. Larger sums are expected to follow after a spending review in spring.
While the MHCLG has neither confirmed nor denied the news, Angela Rayner had previously argued that council housing will be crucial in achieving Labour’s 1.5million homes target.
In a message to local authority leaders and chief executives in England back in July, Rayner set out Labour’s plans to provide further details of the investment into social and affordable housing in the spending review.
The message also stated that £450million would be allocated for the third Local Authority Housing Fund which would allow for over 2,000 homes to be built and acquired to provide housing for families at risk of homelessness.
Rayner has set out plans to grow building rates back to the heights seen under Gordon Brown, where 30,000 social homes were built each year. The housing secretary also aims to reverse the loss of council homes through right-to-buy by April 2026.
The government currently spends £30billion each year on housing benefits, which could climb to £39billion by 2030, while temporary homeless accommodation costs for councils are soaring. It is hoped that an increased focus on building new council homes will help to curb spending while also tackling rising homelessness numbers.
Research by the Centre for Homelessness Impact has found that councils are currently spending £474million a year on accommodation for homeless people, three times higher than in 2014.
