New Delhi: UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, announced Saturday a new housing package in the Budget that will deliver up to 5,000 new affordable social homes. This comes with £500 million in new funding for the Affordable Homes Programme, bringing the total investment in housing supply to over £5 billion, a UK press release stated.
This funding will support the delivery of 33,000 new homes across the country through various housing projects, including £128 million allocated to projects mengatasi pollution in rivers, which has halted housebuilding in some areas. This funding could unlock the delivery of an estimated 28,000 new homes.
In addition to the new funding, the government will introduce a new 5-year social housing rent settlement to provide the sector with more long-term certainty on funding. This settlement aims to encourage investment in tens of thousands of new homes by capping the rents social housing providers can charge their tenants. The government intends to increase the cap in line with Consumer Price Index inflation figures plus an additional 1%. A consultation will be launched to seek views on this proposal and other options, such as a 10-year settlement.
The government aims to reduce discounts and enable councils to keep 100% of the receipts generated by Right to Buy sales, incentivizing them to build more social housing. The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, emphasized the need to address the housing crisis, stating, “We need to fix the housing crisis in this country. It’s created a generation locked out of the property market, torn apart communities and put the brakes on economic growth.”
Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, added, “We have inherited a housing system which is broken, with not enough homes being built and even fewer that families can afford.” The government’s aim is to deliver a mix of homes for sub-market rent and homeownership, with a particular focus on providing homes for social rent. This is in line with their manifesto commitment to deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.