Brick by Brick: A Plan To Deliver the Social Homes We Need

Building more social housing is the only way to end the housing emergency. This report sets out a plan for the government to deliver the 90,000 homes a year that this country needs.

Read the full report

We've summarised the main points of the report below.

There is a chronic shortage of social rent homes in England

In the last 10 years, we’ve seen a net loss of 260,000 social rent homes, including 11,700 homes lost last year alone.¹

Building more social rent homes is the only lasting solution to the housing emergency. These homes are genuinely affordable because they have rents linked to local income, secure tenancies, and any rent increases are more predictable than in the private rented sector.

There is now agreement across both the housing sector and the political divide that England needs at least 90,000 social rent homes built a year, for 10 years. This would be enough to house every homeless household and clear most social housing waiting lists.

This graph shows the decline in new social homes delivered since 2010.²

This graph shows the decline in new social homes delivered between 2010 and 2022. Just under 40,000 homes were delivered in 2010-11, preceding ten years of continuous loss, which plummets to under 10,000 homes in 2022. The lowest delivery of homes was between 2016 and 2020 (see footnote 2 for source).

Ending the housing emergency is a smart investment

Yes really! The total benefit of building 90,000 homes is estimated to be as much as £51.2 billion over 30 years. The most direct lever that the government has to increase social housebuilding is grant funding through the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP). This is why we need:

a new, reformed 10-year Affordable Homes Programme focused on the delivery of social rent over other housing tenures
a change in fiscal rules³
a long-term rent settlement - giving social housing providers and tenants the confidence and security to plan for the future

The government's target of 1.5 million new homes per year, must include a social housing target which ramps up to 90,000 social homes a year in five years.

A six-point plan for how the new government can get there

In this report, Shelter proposes a comprehensive plan to get a mass-scale building programme off the ground.

Set a clear ambition
A new Affordable Homes Programme
Unlock our land system
Unblock our planning system
Boost council building
Create new ways of delivering social homes

Set a clear ambition

While we need more homes of all types, it’s not enough to increase the overall supply of private homes in the hope that benefits will ‘trickle down’. The government's target of 1.5 million homes a year will not improve affordability and existing conditions without a social housing target of 90,000 a year.

The government must stop relying on private developers to solve the housing emergency: a private developer will not build enough homes in an area to drive down prices, as it works in their favour to drip-feed homes onto the market to keep prices high enough to make a profit. England needs a clear ambition to end homelessness and house everyone on social housing waiting lists. Everything flows from this.

A new Affordable Homes Programme

The government’s most direct lever to increase social housebuilding is grant funding through the Affordable Homes Programme (AHP).

The government should deliver a new, reformed 10-year Affordable Homes Programme focusing most of the funding on social rent, devolving powers and making the application process easier - so councils and housing associations can get on with the job of building.

Unlock our land system

The cost of land is also a major barrier to social housebuilding and makes it impossible for councils to deliver genuinely affordable social homes directly. It also reduces the number of social and affordable homes delivered through the planning system. To help councils acquire land more cheaply, the government should:

support councils to use new rules to eliminate hope value through compulsory purchase powers
reform property taxes to fund social housing and improve equality
create a comprehensive and more transparent land register
change rules so that council-owned and public land is used for social rent rather than sold at the highest price
release the ‘grey belt’ to get more land ensuring councils capture the increase in land value by setting minimum levels of social rent homes.

Unblock our planning system

The land and planning system is broken. We need a planning system that incentivises building genuinely affordable social rent homes. The new government should ensure:

there’s a social housing target in every area based on these two needs: social housing waiting lists and levels of homelessness
councils have updated local plans that aim to end the housing emergency based on these two needs
developers are building the social homes they promise by ensuring local authorities have a ‘duty to require’ on-site delivery of at least 20% on large building sites

Boost council building

Direct delivery by councils has been the only way England has ever hit high housing targets. Fifty years ago (in 1974), councils directly delivered nearly 100,000 social rent homes.⁴ Following years of funding cuts, many councils were forced to shut down their building operations, transfer their council stock to housing associations or focus on building private homes for sale to balance their budgets.

Unleashing them again would help to build 34,000 social rented homes a year by 2030. There are a series of interventions that could help a council housebuilding renaissance:

local authorities need increased grant funding
local planning authorities need more capacity to review planning applications and fast-track the delivery of social homes
suspend the Right to Buy scheme
capacity and funding for in-house planning and housing delivery teams to get councils building
a new national land strategy
measures to unlock low-interest borrowing
a central government programme to support councils to pool resources and expertise, and to use their collective power to secure better deals in negotiations with suppliers.
support from Homes England to use new Compulsory Purchase Powers, and liability insurance backed by central government

The government must use funding and policy interventions to get more long-term empty homes converted into social rent homes. They should also support Community Land Trusts to deliver the genuinely affordable homes their communities need and lay the groundwork for a new era of new towns with new measures to boost the Development Corporations.⁵

There must also be a focus on the link between the housing emergency and the climate emergency. Just as we must share the consequences of climate change, we should all share the benefits of better environmental policies, better-built homes, access to green space, new green technologies, and a just transition to net zero and growth.

For questions about the content of this report, email our Public Affairs team. For media enquiries, email our Media team.

Why do we need more social rent homes?

300,000 people are currently homeless, with the number of those rough sleeping more than double what it was in 2010
151,000 children are growing up in temporary accommodation in England - the highest number on record
1.3m households are on social housing waiting lists, forcing people into a broken private rented sector

Millions of families across England are living in poor conditions in some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. Homes are badly insulated and are riddled with damp and mould with many renters being forced to choose between feeding their families and paying ever-rising rents.

Our new government has promised a housebuilding revolution. Together, we must ensure that means social rent homes.

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