Ministers Name Where 70,000 Social Homes Will Be Built

Ministers have announced where more than 70,000 social and affordable homes will be built in England over the next decade, as part of an initial allocation of almost £10bn intended to address the housing crisis.

Funding has gone to Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North East England and Liverpool. A further £6bn was previously announced for London.

It forms the first tranche of a wider plan to build 300,000 social and affordable homes under a £39bn social housebuilding programme.

What the categories mean

Social housing provides homes at low cost, managed by social landlords. The definition covers affordable rented properties as well as low-cost ownership routes such as shared ownership, and can be delivered by local authorities or housing associations.

That breadth is worth noting, because "social and affordable" spans a wide range of actual rents. A home let at a social rent and a shared-ownership flat priced against local market values are very different products, and both count towards the total.

The initial allocation covers six English regions, with a further £6bn previously announced for London.

The reaction

Housing charities welcomed the announcement while saying it falls well short of demand. The Conservatives described it as an "unfunded spending commitment."

Both criticisms can be true simultaneously, and the tension between them is the whole politics of housebuilding. The scale required to meet need is larger than any recent government has funded; the scale announced is already large enough that opponents question whether the money exists.

The arithmetic

Seventy thousand homes over ten years, across six regions plus London, is 7,000 a year nationally.

Set against a social housing waiting list running into the millions of households and an annual loss of stock through right-to-buy and demolition, that is a meaningful programme rather than a transformative one. The 300,000 target across the full £39bn is the more significant number, and it depends on allocations that have not yet been made.

The unresolved question

Before becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham had called for a substantially more ambitious approach — a position that now sits somewhat awkwardly against the first allocation from his own government.

The constraint is not only money. Delivering social housing at this volume requires land, planning consent, construction capacity and housing associations with balance sheets able to borrow against future rents. Several of those are tighter than the funding is.

Which is why the announcement names locations rather than completions. The money has been allocated; whether 70,000 homes actually appear over ten years depends on a delivery chain that this statement does not address.

Where the regions sit

The six recipients — Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, the North East and Liverpool — are all mayoral combined authorities, which is not a coincidence.

Devolved authorities with their own housing powers and land holdings can commit sites and align planning far faster than a programme negotiated council by council. Allocating the first tranche to them is a bet on delivery speed rather than on where need is greatest, and it leaves large parts of the country waiting for later rounds.

The stock problem

The figure that determines whether any of this works is net rather than gross. England has been losing social homes for decades through right to buy, demolition and conversion, and a building programme that does not exceed those losses leaves the total stock flat while appearing to add tens of thousands of homes.

Neither the announcement nor the programme's headline target is expressed net. Until it is, the honest answer to whether 70,000 homes reduces the waiting list is that nobody has said.