Briefing: Roadmap to the future of council homes

With homelessness at record levels, it is widely recognised that we need to build 90,000 social rent homes a year for 10 years in England to end the housing emergency.

The last time we built social housing on the mass scale that is now required, councils were the driving force, delivering over 120,000 social homes a year on average during the 1960s. Councils currently build just over 2,200 social rent homes per year. Analysis by Arup for Shelter in 2024 showed that with the right support and powers, councils could ramp up to delivering 34,000 of the 90,000 social rent homes a year we need through both new build and acquisition of existing homes .

This briefing sets out 5 key changes the government must make to unleash a council housing revolution, knocking down the barriers to councils building social rent homes at scale once again.