Source · Select Committees · Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee
Recommendation 24
24
Accepted in Part
Ensure social and genuinely affordable housing comprises a substantial proportion of the 1.5 million homes target.
Recommendation
The Government clearly recognises the scale of the homelessness crisis in England, and we welcome the scale of the Government’s ambition to tackle it. We welcome the Government’s target to deliver 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament, however, as the Minister for Homelessness and Democracy outlined, we must not lose focus on the need for social and affordable housing to alleviate the crisis in temporary accommodation. (Conclusion, Paragraph 91) The Government must ensure that social and genuinely affordable housing forms a substantial proportion of its 1.5 million target, given the importance of these tenures to ending homelessness in England. In the forthcoming long-term housing strategy, the Government must set out how the national housing target will be achieved by tenure, including a target for Social Rent homes to promote genuinely affordable housing as part of the housing mix. The Government must also recognise the urgent need for immediate interventions, as outlined in this Report, to improve temporary accommodation provision and to support families into more settled homes. (Recommendation, Paragraph 91) 49
Government Response Summary
The government committed to significantly increasing social and affordable housing, with a particular focus on Social Rent homes, backed by an additional £2.8 billion investment, and will outline actions in the forthcoming long-term housing strategy, though it has not yet set a specific affordable housing target.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
The government has not set an affordable housing target to date, but we are committed to delivering the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation. The long-term housing strategy will be published later this year and will include the actions that we will take to reach this vision, building on announcements we have already made, and provide long-term certainty. When this Government took office, the 2021–26 Affordable Homes Programme had committed nearly its entire budget. Since then, we have announced £800 million in additional programme funding to deliver up to 7,800 new social and affordable homes. We have been pleased to see strong take up for this funding from councils and housing associations, and we know that this funding is now close to being fully committed. On 25 March we further injected £2 billion from 2026/27, to build up to 18,000 new homes by the end of this Parliament. This funding is a downpayment on future long-term investment to enable new schemes to get going – and will act as a bridge to a new programme. We will announce additional funding for next year (2026/27) and beyond at the Spending Review later this year. This new investment will deliver a mix of homes for sub-market rent and homeownership, with a particular focus on delivering homes for Social Rent. In addition, the provision of affordable homes will be supported by our ‘Golden Rules’ for Green Belt development. Prior to development plan policies for affordable housing being updated in accordance with the revised National Planning Policy Framework, the affordable housing contribution required to satisfy the ‘Golden Rules’ is 15 percentage points above the highest existing affordable housing requirement that would otherwise apply to the development, subject to a cap of 50%. We estimate that under this model, the median Green Belt local planning authority affordable housing requirement will be 50%.