Sunday, November 01, 2026
Burnham's housing black hole
The paper says that unless a further £7bn of extra funding can be found then Burnham is at risk of failing to deliver his flagship pledge to oversee the “biggest council housebuilding drive since the postwar period”:
The prime minister promised a “historic council housebuilding comeback” shortly after he returned to parliament in the wake of his victory in the Makerfield by-election.
He has since pledged more than £40bn for the 10-year social and affordable homes programme (SAHP), including an extra £1.5bn unveiled at this week’s Budget.
But a new report from the New Economics Foundation (NEF) has warned he risks falling short of his promise unless he provides a further £7bn boost to the programme at the next spending review.
Homelessness charity Shelter said the Budget funding boost “falls short” of what is needed to tackle the country’s housing crisis, while charity Crisis said the government needs to “shift gear” in order to meet its targets.
The report, seen by The Independent, says the government’s current plans will see an average of 18,000 social homes built a year over the next decade.
However, housing experts including Crisis, Shelter and the NEF say England needs 90,000 new social homes a year to meet current demand.
During the post-war peak in the 1970s, English local authorities built an average of 103,000 homes every year. But in the five years to 2025, they managed to build just 2,000 annually.
The NEF report states that current delivery plans are projected to deliver just a “fraction of the post-war peak in new social housing” and says the SAHP must be scaled up “if the government is serious about delivering record post-war levels of social housing”.
Molly Harris, senior researcher at NEF, said: “Investing in new social homes is our only way of solving the housing crisis for good. Households stuck on waiting lists are facing overcrowding, rent they can’t afford, or a years-long stay in temporary accommodation.
“The prime minister clearly understands the importance of social homes, with councils at the forefront, but this month’s budget and next year’s spending review need to back this up with hard cash.”
During the postwar peak in the 1970s, English local authorities built an average of 103,000 homes every year. In the five years leading up to 2025, they managed just 2,000 completions annually
If an extra £7bn of funding is delivered by the end of the spending review, with more spent earlier in the programme, the report states SAHP could fund over 100,000 new council and social homes by 2030.
This rate of growth would put England on track to building the 90,000 council and social homes a year by 2032-33.
Mairi MacRae, acting chief executive of Shelter, said building social homes at scale is “paramount” and warned the government must provide more funding to “do even more”.
“Councils used to deliver hundreds of thousands of social homes, but decades of poor political choices have depleted the supply,” she said. “The funding boost in the Budget to build more is a significant investment but falls short of what's needed to meet the country’s dire housing need.
"To deliver the biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period, the government must do even more. This starts with further increasing funding for the Social and Affordable Homes Programme, as well as removing the historical housing debt from council balance sheets that’s blocking them from building.
“By re-visiting its fiscal framework the government has the power to unlock the kind of investment needed to truly deliver council homes at scale."
This is all very concerning of course. The provision of new social housing should be a major priority for the government. But when did the country stop being able to build new infrastructure at the sort of scale and pace of only a few decades ago?
