Social Housing

Question

11:17:00

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the number of new social homes built, and the number of new homes for social rent which have received planning permission, in the past six months.

My Lords, I was delighted that in the spending review last week the Government were able to provide the biggest boost to social and affordable housing investment in a generation. We have confirmed £39 billion for a successor to the affordable homes programme over 10 years. On the planning application statistics that my noble friend has requested, although the publication includes the number of homes granted planning permission, it does not yet include separate figures for new social homes built or the number of homes for social rent. The next quarterly publication is due on 19 June. However, there is an annual release published by the Government that includes affordable and social homes. The data for the last six months, up to March 2025, is not yet released but it will be available later this month.

I thank my noble friend for that very positive reply. The entrenched and acute housing crisis inherited by the Government is in no small part due to the long-term failure to build anywhere near enough homes for social rent. My noble friend has made it clear that we are finally on the path to turn this around. The National Housing Federation and other sector bodies described last week’s announcement as “transformational … and will deliver the right conditions for a decade of renewal and growth … It is the most ambitious Affordable Homes Programme we’ve seen in decades” and, most importantly, “offers real hope to thousands of people who need safe, secure and affordable homes”. Can my noble friend the Minister provide an update on the design and delivery of the new 10-year affordable homes programme, including what emphasis it will place on social rented homes, alongside other affordable tenures such as shared ownership?

I am grateful to my noble friend for her warm reception for the announcement made at the spending review, and to the many social housing bodies that have echoed her words. We will work with the sector at pace to design the programme. We have provided certainty that it will be for a full 10 years; our providers wanted that certainty, and we were pleased to give it. We have combined that with a 10-year rent settlement that will give social housing providers the support and certainty they need to build the social and affordable homes that are so desperately needed. It is important to note the decline in social home building: in the 1950s, when my town was built, we were building around 200,000 social homes a year, but in recent years, we have built fewer than 10,000. We have a lot of work to do, and we will get on with the job.

My Lords, where are the plumbers, electricians and builders going to come from to build these houses? Do the Government have plans to increase the number of people in apprenticeships who are being trained for that purpose?

I am pleased to be able to tell the noble Lord that we have a £600 million package for construction skills. We set up the Construction Skills Mission Board under the very able chairmanship of Mark Reynolds from Mace; I worked with Mark and Mace on the regeneration of Stevenage, so I am sure that he will do a fantastic job on that. That will create an extra 60,000 construction worker posts by 2029. There will be 10 new technical excellence colleges. Skills bootcamps have been extended with £100 million of funding, including short-term training for new entrants and upskilling for returners. The Construction Industry Training Board has really stepped up here with funding from industry to fund over 40,000 industry placements and to double the size of the new entrant support scheme to support SMEs to recruit, engage and retain apprentices.

My Lords, homelessness and housing costs are driving factors in both child poverty and ever-escalating costs of homelessness. My council alone is spending £60 million a year—a figure that is rising—to tackle homelessness. Newham and other councils have done their absolute best to provide affordable homes and thereby cut costs to themselves and their residents, but they need government help. Can my noble friend say what assessment she has made of the role of local government in the delivery of affordable and social homes?

I thank my noble friend. Of course I would say this, but local government is absolutely critical to delivering the new, generational change in the number of social homes being delivered. Our changes to reverse the set of supply-negative changes made by the previous Government introduce a wider set of growth-focused interventions that will help with this. The Secretary of State and I want this to be a plan-led system. When the new National Planning Policy Framework was published in December last year, I was delighted to see that we have, for the first time, encouraged local authorities to assess their social housing need separately from affordable housing, which I am sure will help. Later this year, we will introduce reforms to accelerate local plan preparation. As my noble friend said, this is not just a great cost to the people who are homeless and in temporary emergency accommodation but an enormous cost to the public purse and for our councils, so we need to solve the problem quickly.

My Lords, I hugely welcome the £39 billion announced in the spending review for affordable housing; it is really good news. Will the Minister comment on a new blockage to getting those homes built: the long delays with the building safety regulator? Are these the major reason why in London the number of new-build starts is way down this year compared with last year? Can we do anything about the delays in approvals by the building safety regulator?

I am glad that the noble Lord asked me that question, because regulators fall into my part of the departmental responsibilities. I am very aware of the concerns about the impact of gateway delays on investment decisions in high-rise and other projects. We are taking significant measures to address the challenges currently faced by the building safety regulator. We are exploring all options with the regulator to ensure that it is equipped for the high demand of applications. We have already provided additional funding to improve capacity at the BSR for building control caseworkers and in-house technical specialists, and we are working with it on a daily basis to make the system a bit slicker than it is now.

In light of the findings of the report on transforming lives and balancing budgets, can the Minister say what urgent steps the Government are taking to address the chronic shortage of appropriate community housing for adults, particularly those with autism and learning disabilities? Will the department explore partnerships with private capital providers to scale up specialist supported housing without relying on new public capital?

That is an important question, and we will see answers on the various specialist housing provisions in the housing strategy, which will be published later this year. The noble Baroness is right to point to the particular need for supported housing, which will be included in the strategy. We made some announcements this week on the national housing bank, which includes a partnership with the private sector to deliver housing; I refer noble Lords to the Written Ministerial Statement on that subject rather than going into the detail now. The noble Baroness is right that we will work with both public and private sector funding to deliver as much of the housing as we can, and the details of specialist housing will be included in the housing strategy.

My Lords, it would be churlish not to recognise the amount of money being put into social housing, but the Opposition will always say it is never enough so: it is never enough. The Minister will be aware that the barriers to building and delivering social housing are neither just financial nor, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, said, just around building safety; both the Section 106 route and the affordable homes programme have their problems for developers and providers. Can the Minister say what steps are being taken to overcome these barriers? In particular, are the Government considering reforming Section 106? Can she tell us when we will know what percentage of the affordable homes programme will be used for social housing, rather than so-called affordable housing, which is very unaffordable for many?

On the second part of the noble Baroness’s question, we are working on how we will deliver the split between affordable and social housing. Of course, both are important to the sector, and we will come forward with further information on that. On the Section 106 issues and the other barriers in the housing system, I was very pleased that the changes to the NPPF were made this year, because they will help. We have a new homes accelerator in the department, where developers or local authorities can come forward to help remove the barriers that are getting in the way. I will come back to the noble Baroness on her question about Section 106.