Posted: March 30, 2026 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Affordable housing, Social housing |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
What are the investment prospects for housing in the rest of this decade? What challenges lie ahead? And how do the different UK nations measure up to each other on affordable housing?
This year’s UK Housing Review (UKHR) offers all the statistics we’ve come to expect, plus commentary on everything from the rise of for-profit housing associations to the impact of the Right to Buy and from rising homelessness to falling social lettings.
But my eye was drawn first to John Perry’s chapter on housing expenditure plans.
Ever since the launch of Help to Buy, the scope of his analysis has extended beyond conventional grant to encompass a growing number of loans and guarantees across tenures.
At the peak (or nadir) in 2017 a staggering 84 per cent of total support for housing over the next five years was going to the private market (£42.8 billion) with just 16 per cent for social and affordable housing (£8.2 billion).
The bulk of that private support was in Help to Buy equity loans and mortgage guarantees and the total amount has fallen since the end of those schemes.
Comparable analysis for last year’s UKHR showed that for the first time since then the majority of support over the five years (2020/21 to 2025/26) was going to social and affordable housing.
The 2026 edition looks forward to the next five years from 2026/27 to 2029/30. In the wake of Labour’s ‘biggest boost in a generation’, 51 per cent of total funding will go to social and affordable housing (£21.7 billion) comprising £16.2 billion in grant, £2.5 billion in loans from the National Housing Bank and £3 billion for the Affordable Homes Guarantee Scheme.
Most of the remaining 49 per cent going to the private market (£21.2 billion) will be in grant, loans and guarantees for the National Housing Delivery Fund, alongside £1 billion in guarantees to support small housebuilders and £1.7 billion in debt guarantees to support build to rent.
What feels significant is that all of that private investment will support supply whereas Help to Buy was also a big stimulus to demand.
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Posted: March 4, 2026 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Council housing, Homelessness, Housebuilding, Local government, Temporary accommodation |
Originally written as a column for Inside Housing
There were by choice no policy announcements in the Spring Statement but the message about the government’s housing priorities could hardly have been clearer.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves had deliberately downplayed the significance of the statement, which was meant to be an update on the public finances rather than a full-blown Budget.
That meant that – with one exception – there were no background documents to wade through to find hidden announcements and hints about future policy direction.]
The exception came from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), and the first message was about the key manifesto target of 1.5 additional homes in this parliament.
Not a chance, says the OBR’s Economic and Fiscal Outlook: in the five years from 2025/26 to 2030/31 the independent watchdog forecasts there will be just 1.3 million net additions across the UK (30,000 higher than it forecast in November).
Net additions will fall in line with subdued recent housing starts to just 220,000 in 2026/27, it says, but then rise sharply to just over 305,000 by 2030/31 ‘reflecting the impact of planning reforms’.
That may sound closer than we thought to 1.5 million and the government will welcome the acknowledgement of the impact of its policies.
But eagle-eyed readers will already have spotted that the target is for England whereas the forecast is for the UK and that they cover different time periods.
Adjusting for homes built in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland only increases the size of the shortfall: England-only net additions will total around 1.1 million, 400,000 short of the target.
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Jules Birch 