The government has confirmed the first allocations from its social housing funding England drive, with more than 70,000 social and affordable homes to be built across six English regions over ten years as part of a £39 billion social housebuilding programme. Funding has been granted to Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North East England, and Liverpool, alongside a separate £6 billion for London.
The announcement represents the first tranche of a broader ambition to deliver 300,000 social and affordable homes nationally. Ministers said more than £16 billion remains to be allocated outside London, and that Monday’s announcement was only the opening stage of the decade-long plan.
What the social housing funding means in practice
Of the homes announced, 60% will be for social rent. Social rent means the cost is roughly half that of market rents, and strict criteria govern who can apply. The remainder will cover other affordable tenures, including shared ownership.
Housing Secretary Angela Rayner indicated that some of the new homes will be built by councils, saying she and the prime minister were ‘doing everything we can to get councils building once again’. The announcement stops short of specifying how the funding will be split between council homes and those delivered by housing associations. In the 1950s, councils were building close to 200,000 new council homes a year; today, half of all councils do not own or build any homes of their own. In 2024-25, just over 12,000 homes were built for social rent, the highest figure since 2013-14, but far short of the 90,000 a year that organisations including the National Housing Federation and homeless charities have said is needed to meet demand.
Andy Burnham, who had previously called for the entire 10-year affordable housing budget to be spent on social rent homes, said: ‘No child should be raised in a hostel room and no family should wait 10 years for a front door of their own. I have said from my first day in this job that everything starts with a good home.’
Greater Manchester’s share of social housing funding England
Greater Manchester stands to be one of the clearest beneficiaries of the programme. According to I Love Manchester, the city-region is set to benefit from £1.8 billion from the Social and Affordable Homes Programme in total.
Two projects illustrate what that money could deliver on the ground. In Oldham, a scheme at Prince’s Gate, with £31.5 million due to be committed, is working with a developer to build 331 new homes next to Oldham Mumps station, 75 of which will be social housing. The project forms part of a larger plan to construct a total of 2,000 new homes across Oldham town centre over the next decade.
In Salford, £23.4 million is due to be committed to the Adelphi Village redevelopment, which will deliver 301 homes for social and affordable rent and 42 new townhouses. The scheme is already set to deliver 336 new apartments across two new buildings, according to the Greater Manchester Combined Authority.
The scale of the housing crisis behind the numbers
The backdrop to Monday’s announcement is a homelessness situation that has continued to worsen. Data released earlier this month suggested 177,530 children were living in temporary accommodation. As of March 2025, 1.34 million households were on social housing waiting lists, the latest government figures show.
Natasha, a 22-year-old who has been living in a hotel in Milton Keynes for the last four months with her five-week-old son Zayd, is one of them. She spent the final months of her pregnancy and the first weeks of her son’s life in that hotel. She shares a kitchen with around 60 other residents, visitors are not permitted, and she describes the experience as feeling ‘like a prison’. ‘I just want somewhere peaceful for him and calm. Somewhere nice where I can bring him up,’ she said.
Charlie Berry, policy manager at housing charity Shelter, welcomed the announcement but said it was ‘not near the level we need to truly tackle that backlog and end homelessness’. She called it a ‘significant improvement’ and said she would ‘love’ Rayner to commit to a specific annual target for socially rented homes.
Political reaction and the wider housebuilding target
Conservative shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly described the funding announcement as ‘sleight of hand’, arguing that ‘the small print shows homes won’t have to be delivered until 2039’ and that fewer homes will be built than under previous programmes because social rent is more expensive to deliver. His party has also said it would end social housing provision for foreign nationals in England if it returns to power, claiming that would free up 228,144 homes.
Reform UK separately announced plans on Monday to prioritise British-born workers under 35 in social housing allocations. Shelter said there were ‘already strict rules on who can access social housing’ and that neither proposal addressed the underlying causes of the shortage.
The social housing funding England programme sits alongside Labour’s broader pledge to build 1.5 million homes by 2029. The latest data tracked by BBC Verify, using Energy Performance Certificate figures, suggests around 203,000 new homes were delivered in England in the 12 months to June 2026. The government’s target requires at least 300,000 a year.
