Social Housing – 5 Key Facts

Here are the 5 key facts taken from the Social Housing Market Report 202-2024: 

1. Since 2014, UK social / affordable completions have increased year on year to an estimated 68,000 in 2019/20. However, the majority of these are affordable rent and shared ownership tenures. Social rent completions in England remain very low at around 6,000 units a year.
2. To address this issue, the removal of the Housing Revenue Account debt cap allows local authorities to borrow money for development without government restrictions. The 5-year local authority development pipeline to 2025 is around 70,000 dwellings, which will mostly be for social rent.
3. In the 2020 Spring Budget, the government has pledged £12bn funding for the next round of the Affordable Homes programme, which should stimulate growth in housing association starts from 2021.
4. To meet the need for increasing the volume of affordable housing delivered each year, it is anticipated that there will be increased use of offsite housing systems to meet the need for faster completions and to counter the chronic decline in skilled trades.
5. Some of the larger housing associations have committed themselves to increasing their use of offsite housing systems. They are also looking to obtain more control of affordable housing delivering by moving away from the section 106 model towards self-delivery of home son their own land.