Council Housing

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir Jeremy Wright in the Chair]

11:09

[Chris Hinchliff (North East Hertfordshire) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the delivery of council housing.

It is an honour to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I must declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on council and social housing, for which Shelter expertly provides the secretariat. The APPG is currently undertaking an inquiry into barriers to council house building and the solutions required. Although I do not want to overly pre-empt our findings today, I do want to take the opportunity to invite the Minister to attend the launch of the report from that inquiry, and I invite hon. Members across the Chamber today to attend the evidence sessions we are currently holding, including that taking place shortly after this debate.

Given the imminent Budget, I will not ask the Minister for lots of spending commitments today. Instead, I would be grateful if he could answer just one specific question: will he put a number on what is meant by

“the biggest council house building programme”

since the end of the post-war period? I think we would all be interested to know what precise target the Government are setting.

I am keen to be optimistic and positive in my contribution today, so I will get the polemical bits out of the way first. There is, I am afraid, a nasty strain of ideology infecting political circles these days that seems to think of our fellow citizens as a lumpen mass of incorrigible misanthropes motivated only by mercenary selfishness and having no care for the good of their wider community when it comes to housing and development. That is certainly not my experience. It says more about the miserabilism of the so-called YIMBY—yes, in my backyard—movement than it does about those they accuse. There is no public support barrier to building high-quality homes in the towns and villages in my constituency. Indeed, people are crying out for it. When the public tell us they do not want this particular rubbish, the problem is the rubbish, not the public.

[Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this vital debate; he is right. People in Leeds and across the country know there is a council house crisis and they support, I believe, Shelter’s campaign for the Government to make national council house building a mission, because building council houses not only provides homes; it is a bit like rent controls. An intervention in the private market can bring rents down because the private sector cannot solve the council house crisis and the housing crisis. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I completely agree. We have seen for many years that the market cannot solve this problem. In fact, it speaks to a rotten lack of ambition that the political response to children living in cramped, damp and overcrowded conditions has so often been to demand that we lower our expectations for the future, promising that the only way to get families out of temporary accommodation is to reduce insulation standards, concrete over the countryside and ignore risks such as flooding and the lack of infrastructure. Then, it might be more profitable for developers to cast their crumbs down to our communities. What a tragic irony that we are told that the only way to rescue families from low-quality emergency housing is by lowering the standards of the permanent homes we build instead. The problem was never that our standards were too high. It was the surrender to neoliberal capitalism and the lack of political will that accompanied its hollowing out of our state’s capacity to function that stopped the building of decent, affordable homes at scale.

Secondly, it is worth paraphrasing Keynes early on in this debate by reiterating that claiming it does not pay to house the people of this country in affordable, high-quality housing is one of the most dismal notions ever advanced by modern economics. We have the technology and the capacity to house everyone safely, comfortably and in beautiful surroundings. If private capital says it is not profitable enough to do so, the problem is with the economic model, not with the hope for our nation’s future.

Having dispensed with those points, before we get to the question of how, I want to dwell briefly on the possibilities of a future in which the Labour Government achieve their council housing goals. When we debate this subject, we often focus—and rightly so—on the immediate crisis and urgent need that council housing can alleviate, but the power of council housing to transform the future of our society does not end there.

[Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this timely and important debate and for the excellent speech that he is making. Although he briefly touched on the urgent need before moving on to the longer-term situation, does he agree that in places like Bradford, where we currently have 25,000 people on a waiting list—many are families with young children living in poverty and the same squalid, damp conditions that he mentions—there is an immediate, urgent need? Therefore, as well as asking the Minister how many—

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but he can see the level of interest in the debate. We must have short interventions, please. Two or three more words and then we will let the hon. Gentleman respond.

[Imran Hussain]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the urgent need requires immediate housebuilding?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I agree; my hon. Friend is absolutely right about the immediate need, which I will come to later.

This is a slightly incongruous point, but I am sure that, like me, every hon. Member in the Chamber visits schools in their constituency often. When I see the potential in pupils such as those at Little Hadham primary school, where I was last, I cannot help but contemplate what future we are building for them. If it is one in which hundreds of thousands of council homes have been built in every community—and I do mean in our most rural villages as well as our greatest cities—for people of every background, including doctors, academics, farm workers, bus drivers, bin men and bar staff, then what our country will be able to offer them will be far greater than the prospects that adulthood currently holds.

[Sean Woodcock (Banbury) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Hinchliff]

Not at this point; I had better make progress.

Housing is by far and away the most oppressive, anxiety-inducing and life-stunting part of the cost of living crisis in this country. The price of rent or a mortgage leaves millions struggling to make the bills add up at the end of the month, and millions more only just staying afloat, with little left over to experience life’s other possibilities. If we build enough council housing—to end the years wasted on waiting lists, to ensure that every child has somewhere safe to learn and play and make that a normal part of life again, and to provide an anchor on housing costs for our whole society—then our economy, society and culture will be much healthier than they are.

Let us briefly imagine a boy or girl in a primary school classroom. If, when they reach adulthood, they are able to begin an independent life without shelling out upwards of a third or even half of their salary for a roof over their head, imagine what that would mean for our high streets, coffee shops, pubs, clubs, bars and restaurants. In a future with plentiful council housing, when genuinely affordable housing is recognised as a right of our citizens and not a rare collector’s item, no one, no matter how wealthy, will be able to buy up property and charge others extortionate rents for somewhere to live. With that model of economic vampirism finally laid to rest, billions of pounds currently sucked out of our local economies will begin to flow through our independent shops again.

Suppose that that young man or woman has artistic talents and wants to make their contribution to our society. With our current lack of council housing, how many of us really have the opportunity to explore talents and abilities that do not immediately help to enable us to pay rent? With plentiful, genuinely affordable homes, such that covering the cost of life’s essentials is no longer such an uphill battle, who knows how many McCartneys, Joan Armatradings or Michaela Coels we might have? Delivering council housing is about more than just bricks and mortar; it is about unleashing lost creativity across Great Britain and re-establishing our place as the world’s pre-eminent cultural superpower.

[Sean Woodcock]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Hinchliff]

I had better make progress; I am sorry.

Perhaps most importantly of all, if we succeed in delivering council housing in every community, we will take one of the most important steps in fighting the atomisation of our society, which brings so many social ills. If today’s children are able to put down roots wherever they are growing up, should they want to, with no need to move away in search of prospects and a home of their own, then friendships forged at school will no longer need looked back on with regret, as connections that once meant the world but could not survive the splintering imposed by a lack of homes for the young. Similarly, if the next generation is able to grow into adulthood alongside their parents, supporting them through older life will be a natural part of everything we do, not something we struggle to find time for, with the constant sense that we are left snatching for precious moments all too quickly passing by.

If our imaginary hero should fall in love and think about children of their own—and if we deliver council houses now—we can hope for a future in which the choice is simply whether a couple wishes to start a family, not whether they can afford one. Parents will be able to take time out of employment to raise their child and share in all their first memories, rather than living on borrowed time as burdens mount up.

In short, delivering the council homes our country needs to transform our housing market will make possible a society in which all the parts of life that really matter can finally come ahead of the relentless and disproportionate financial costs of housing that we see today.

How, then, do we realise these hopes? First, building a new generation of council housing is being held back by a pile of largely fictitious debt created by central Government. We cannot ask local councils to deliver the homes of tomorrow while burdened by a model that failed yesterday. Armed with even the best intentions, councils remain suffocated by housing revenue account debt; cancelling that HRA debt could deliver more than 280,000 additional social rent homes in the next decade.

To reverse decades of retreat from public house building and restore the public sector as the driving force in our housing market, new funding must come with new powers for local democracy. If we recognise that social housing delivers a public good, its provision cannot be put on a level playing field with speculative land promoters looking to make a quick buck, or be beholden to the supposed right of wealthy landowners to inflate the value of their land to extract more from the public purse. Councils need to be able to assemble all the land we need for developments, large and small, including where it is already optioned, and to acquire land at existing-use prices, so that council house building is viable in every part of the country.

Above all, we must invest in our councils’ institutional capacity to deliver the housing we need. Even with the fairest possible wind, and even if all the economically destabilising military conflicts around the world came to a close, the truth is that, if the Chancellor showered every local authority with all the funding they could want, the expertise and institutional knowledge to use it would no longer be there.

To deliver the council housing that I suspect every MP in this room wants to see, we need to attract the best and brightest in the country to work in our local authorities, whether as an elected member or as an officer. We need to restore the standing of our underfunded, undervalued and overworked councils, so that the whole country can see that a career in local government is the most tangible route to shaping the future of our nation. From town planning to architecture, design, ecology and construction standards, only the very best is good enough for our constituents, so local councils must be where people go to excel.

In our determination to remove the institutional barriers holding back council house building, we cannot undervalue solutions to get families out of temporary accommodation and off waiting lists now. The Prime Minister was right in his recent conference address to set out plans to take control of empty properties. We should back councils to acquire neglected and empty properties at scale. We have seen throughout our modern history that, in times of crisis, our citizens are conscripted for the common good. Where housing lies dormant during an emergency, we must be willing to take the same approach to property.

The truth is that, from the standing start that we have inherited, in which local authorities such as mine have not built a single council house in decades, new house building will take years to ramp up. However, the housing crisis is one that requires urgent resolution. We must therefore make the acquisition of existing properties to rebuild our council housing stock as important a part of the Government’s mission as new builds. With the housing market in the doldrums, we have a much-needed opportunity for councils to purchase and re-let at affordable rates hundreds of thousands of homes across the country, to bring down waiting lists now.

There are, of course, up-front costs, legislative hurdles and, I expect, a mouthful of teething problems, but it is the bitter medicine we must take today to stop the bleeding of public money to those profiting from the broken system. We must never forget that the Government’s £39 billion investment in affordable and social housing is dwarfed by the £70 billion that the Government are set to spend over the next five years on housing support to subsidise the gap between the rents that private landlords charge and what tenants can afford.

The need for the housing is there, and we are already paying for it. The only question before us is whether we turn that spending into a lasting public asset or keep paying over and over again for failure.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman and I remind all Back-Bench colleagues that you should continue to stand up, so that we know you still want to be called. You can see that there is a great deal of interest in this debate. I suggest that you all keep to about two and a half minutes; that way, we will get everybody in.

14:44

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy, and I say a big thank you to the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate on an extremely pressing issue. The fact that so many hon. Members are present is an indication of that.

In England alone, over 1.3 million households are on the waiting list for social housing and it has been estimated that if the speed of delivering new social homes continues at the current rate, it will take more than a century to clear the waiting list. For every social home delivered this year, about 110 households were still waiting for one. Despite those shocking figures, in 20% of council areas across England not a single social home has been built in the last two years, and in 30% of council areas fewer than 10 social homes have been built. This is a massive issue.

We see the effects of a lack of social housing on private rental properties. In 2025, rents reached the highest level on record, amounting to a staggering 36.1% of average earnings. Rental accommodation is out of the pockets of many and buying a house is just a dream. That perpetuates a devastating cycle, as wages fail to keep pace with rising living costs, including energy bills and food prices, pushing more people into poverty and increasing demand for our already limited social housing.

I will quickly add a Northern Ireland perspective to the debate. In Northern Ireland, social housing is supplied by the Housing Executive, which face issues similar to councils in England. As of June this year, 50,000 households in Northern Ireland with no existing Housing Executive tenancy were on the social housing waiting list. For those who are already in Housing Executive properties, the wait for a transfer can be long and needs can evolve. In August 2026, it was estimated that almost 800 households had spent over a decade on the waiting list for transfer. It would be great to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but unfortunately we do not.

In rural constituencies, such as my constituency of Strangford, allocations of social homes have not kept pace with rising demand. The situation is particularly acute because rural areas have hidden housing need, older homes and increased exposure to fuel poverty. Investment in social housing is urgently needed to end the distress so many people are in, and we must recognise that such investment will indeed deliver long-term benefits. It is needed to end the distress and the uncertainty faced by families who have been left in limbo as they wait for a home.

14:47

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Sir Jeremy, to serve under your chairmanship. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate.

If we track the history of council housing in Amber Valley, we see a story that I fear will sound all too familiar to other Members from across the House. It is a story of decline, neglect and short-sighted political choices, the consequences of which are still being felt today. In 1985, there were more than 5,000 council houses in Amber Valley. By 2003, just one remained. Why was that? During the period between 1985 and 2003, a Conservative-led borough council sold off virtually the entire stock. Make no mistake—it was not because the need for affordable housing had disappeared nor did it represent some great act of financial prudence. To add insult to injury, it is estimated that those houses were sold off to private ownership for only a ninth of their market value. Assets that had been built up over generations, which were paid for by local people and intended to provide secure and affordable homes, were effectively given away.

When Labour took control of the borough council in 2023, it inherited not only a shortage of council homes but the legacy of decades in which the council’s capacity to deliver new homes had been hollowed out. It was not just the housing stock that was gone. As a result, the first task facing the new Labour-led borough council was to rebuild the council’s ability to build homes. It had to restore confidence, capacity and the mechanisms to deliver, before bricks could be laid and properties acquired. Council officers have reskilled themselves admirably, and since 2023, 32 council houses have been acquired, with plans to deliver a further 33 in the pipeline. Those numbers sound modest, but they represent the hard work of rebuilding a housing programme from almost nothing.

More importantly, the council is now in a position to look beyond individual acquisitions towards larger-scale regeneration and house building. After years of stagnation, Amber Valley has adopted a local plan for the first time in two decades. It includes proposals that could deliver up to 180 new council homes on land around Aldreds Lane, and the council is also working closely with the East Midlands Mayor, Claire Ward, to unlock brownfield sites for future development. There is real momentum now. A Labour-led council has begun rebuilding the stock it had lost.

With that in mind, will the Minister outline what support the Government will provide to councils such as Amber Valley that have demonstrated the ambition and the capacity to deliver new council housing, and will he outline how the Government will help authorities to scale up those ambitions so that more families can access the homes that they need?

14:49

[Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)]

Britain’s housing crisis did not happen by accident. It is the direct result of political choices that placed profit over people. For decades, Governments have chosen to allow the stock of genuine council housing to decline while expecting the private market to pick up the pieces, and it clearly has not.

Across our region of Manchester and Tameside, 3,180 households are in temporary accommodation, including more than 5,000 children. Kids should be thinking about whether they are having their favourite meal for tea, not how they will crowd into accommodation unfit for purpose or facing the prospect of sleeping rough. To pay for temporary accommodation, councils have spent almost £3 billion in the past year, which is a staggering increase of 88% in just five years. That money is going straight into the pockets of private landlords, often to banks and big corporations that call property investments assets rather than homes.

I see what that means for people in Gorton, Denton, Abbey Hey, Burnage, Longsight and Levenshulme every single day. I see domestic abuse survivors paying eye-watering private rents while sat on waiting lists, despite being assessed as a priority, hard-working young people giving up on the dream of ever owning a home of their own, and elderly people who know that they will simply not be able to afford their rent once they retire.

The Green party is clear: we need a new generation of council housing that matches the scale of the challenge before us. That starts with putting an end to the loss of housing stock. Right to buy has removed hundreds of thousands of homes from the social sector, which are often now being rented out by private landlords. To be clear, I do not blame anyone who has bought their council home. The problem is with the policy that allowed affordable homes to be sold off without replacing them. Protecting existing stock is only part of the answer. Councils have to be given the tools and resources to build their own homes and to purchase privately owned ones. It means making better use of public land and helping councils to acquire the hundreds of thousands of long-term empty homes that should be brought back into public use.

The Government can continue to kick the can down the road by spending billions to manage the ever-worsening consequences of the housing crisis, or they can invest in solving it. My message to the Minister is simple: stop the loss of social housing, allow councils to buy homes back into public ownership, build council homes at scale and bring empty homes back into use, introduce rent controls and give councils the powers they need to lead the way. Every family deserves more than a roof over their head. They deserve a place to belong, and council housing remains one of the most effective ways the Government have of making that a reality.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

The good news is that I can be a little more generous and allow you all a whole extra 30 seconds each. With three minutes, I call Josh Newbury.

14:49

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

I will start by singing the praises of what we have done in my constituency, because Labour’s record at Cannock Chase district council shows what can be achieved when a council is ambitious about providing the homes its residents need.

After more than 30 years without building new council homes, the last Labour administration, which I was proud to be part of as deputy leader, got building again. It started with the most unglamorous of sites: old garage blocks that were becoming increasingly difficult to rent out, many of which had turned into magnets for antisocial behaviour and drug dealing. We turned them into new homes, filling some of the biggest gaps in our housing stock. We also partnered with Lovell Homes to redevelop the former Aelfgar school site in Rugeley, where 58 new homes have been delivered, including 29 council houses. The ribbon may have been cut under Reform, but the groundwork was done under Labour.

That brings me to the Government’s plans to help councils do more, because in Cannock Chase a lack of ambition was never the problem, finding affordable finance was. That is why I welcome the extension of preferential public works loan board rates, which will help make the numbers stack up for councils looking to invest in new homes.

I also welcome the council house building support fund because councils need the right people and expertise to develop schemes, build pipelines of projects and put together strong bids for funding. That is something that my council found that we often missed out on when councils of other similar sizes were getting funding awarded. I hope that my district council will make full use of that opportunity.

I will also touch on empty homes, something that two constituents raised with me just last week. One is concerned about the number of green belt sites having to be released. The other, who is trying to get on to the housing ladder, very much welcomed the upcoming Your First Home scheme announced by the Prime Minister but felt that bringing empty homes back into use should also be part of the answer.

I therefore welcome the Government’s boost to the powers that councils can use to tackle the issue of long-term empty properties. Again, I encourage Cannock Chase district council to make full use of them, including for two semi-detached houses on Poplar Street in Norton Canes that have stood empty for many years. I am also interested to hear from the Minister about whether there is scope to take the number of long-term empty homes into greater account when housing targets are calculated.

Finally, I welcome the Government’s plans to tighten right to buy because we need to ensure that the council houses that we build remain available to people who need them well into the future. As we make it easier for councils to build again, I hope that we can gradually work towards ending right to buy altogether and protect that housing stock for the long term. That is ultimately what the debate is all about: making sure that people have access to a decent, secure and genuinely affordable home, whether that means building on a neglected garage site, regenerating a former school or bringing empty property back into use. Cannock Chase Labour has shown that councils can deliver, and I hope the Government’s measures will give more councils the means and confidence to do so in future.

14:56

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Ind)]

Meur ras, Sir Jeremy, and it is an honour to serve under your chairship. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.

The single greatest barrier to economic regeneration in Cornwall is housing insecurity and affordability. Employers cannot recruit and retain, young people cannot remain in their home communities and families cannot put down roots unless we have access to a secure, affordable home. That is before we mention the key workers required to run civic society.

Social housing accounts for less than 13% of Cornwall’s entire housing stock, compared with 17% nationally. In peak season, we have 24,000 short-term lets across the duchy, while 25,000 Cornish households sit on waiting lists on the housing register. In fairness, Cornwall council has delivered 850 homes in the last six years through its housing revenue account and general fund, but its capacity to go further is deeply constrained.

How do we revitalise social house building in Cornwall? First, Ministers must review Cornwall council’s £90 million HRA debt arising from 2012’s self-financing settlement. The assumptions underpinning the settlement no longer reflect today’s pressures and servicing that inherited debt diverts money from maintaining existing stock and rebuilding new homes.

Secondly, councils should receive the same access to low-cost development finance as registered providers. Refinancing £52 million of planned development borrowing at 0.1% could save Cornwall council £19 million over 14 years, creating up to £1.8 million in annual revenue headroom and supporting up to £41 million of additional borrowing for new homes.

Thirdly, Cornwall must not be excluded from housing and investment powers because of our national minority status. A strategic place partnership with Homes England could provide both the framework and funding needed to deliver social housing at scale. We will never be part of a mayoral combined authority because of our national minority status, and we cannot be discriminated against and locked out of that funding.

I therefore ask Ministers to review the HRA debt, extend low-cost financing to councils and ensure Cornwall’s immediate access to a strategic place partnership with Homes England.

14:59

[Neil Duncan-Jordan (Poole) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate.

In Poole, we have one of the widest gaps between average wages and private rents in the country, and we suffer from a distinct lack of truly affordable housing for local people, with house prices that are 16% higher than the national figure sitting alongside rents far higher than rents in other parts of the south-west. In 2024-25, my local council built just 89 affordable homes, out of a total of 988 new properties. What we do have is a proliferation of luxury seafront apartments that local people cannot afford. It is no wonder that housing is the biggest issue raised by my constituents. Just 1% of properties in Poole are affordable to rent at the local rate of housing benefit. The freeze on local housing allowance is making rents unaffordable; it needs to be uprated urgently. Also, we need a system of rent controls, as a step towards easing the housing crisis while the building gets started .

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman is giving an impassioned speech about Poole that is really resonating with me as the MP for Chichester, because I see in my constituency large-scale developments delivering four and five-bedroom luxury houses that are not affordable for most people. Does he agree that middle-income earners are particularly affected? A lot of our frontline service workers cannot afford private rents, but earn too much to be eligible for social housing. That is why we need to see a number of social homes across the whole country that the Government will deliver, so that developers cannot renege on their commitments to deliver the homes that we are asking for.

[Neil Duncan-Jordan]

Yes. Obviously, there is an issue about viability and the way developers use that to renege on their earlier commitments to local authorities. There is also the key point that if we want the public sector and public services of the future, the workers who provide those services need to be able to afford to live in the area, so it is a circular argument that we need to keep making with the Government.

Building a new generation of council houses is essential to ending the housing crisis. The £39 billion social and affordable homes programme is welcome, but does not go far enough. The Government need to be more creative when it comes to longer term financing of the sector. Currently, £88 billion-worth of UK pension funds is invested in fossil fuel companies. What better use of that money could there be than redirecting it into council housing?

Let us be more ambitious in our growth agenda. Let us see a council house building programme as a key part of that ambition. Let us remove the historical debt from councils’ housing revenue accounts, which other Members have mentioned. Let us unlock low-cost financing for council house building, enable councils to buy land at the right price to build social rent homes, and bring empty properties back to life. Let us give future generations the hope that was there after 1945, with a real housing revolution that offers everyone a place they can call home.

15:03

[Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve with you in the chair, Sir Jeremy.

South Devon is a beautiful part of the world, with its stunning coastline and idyllic rural villages, but scratch the surface and you will find a severe housing crisis, which is eating away at the viability of our rural and coastal communities, threatening the very fabric of village life and turning parts of it into a theme park for the rich. Wages have fallen so far out of step with housing costs that local people are just being priced out of the communities they grew up in. I welcome aspects of the Bill, but it simply does not address the mechanics driving this crisis.

Housing associations exist to provide homes for people who cannot afford to buy or rent on the open market, yet a growing number of those homes are leaving the sector altogether. Since 2018-19, English housing associations have sold more than 25,000 social and affordable homes to private buyers, and the pace is quickening. Last year’s sales were the highest on record, having risen 89% in just two years.

Towns such as Salcombe and Dartmouth in South Devon are among the most expensive places to live in the country. Yes, they are full of second homes and short-term lets, but they are not just holiday destinations. Real people live there. These are people who grew up there, people who work there and people who keep essential local services running, but they are being priced out. One local housing association has sold 49 social homes since 2022, with the biggest losses in those high-cost areas. In Kingswear, another beautiful village by the sea, more than a third of the social housing stock has vanished in just three years; the primary school has closed down and with so few affordable homes left, there is nothing to draw young families back to the area. When challenged, the housing association points to replacement homes that it has bought in Sherford, a new town on the edge of Plymouth that is 30 miles away. That is no comfort to a family forced out of Kingswear.

Let us set that against demand. Across the South Hams and Torbay, 3,600 homes have been built in five years, but more than 2,500 households remain in formal housing need. That is because most of the new homes are sold at full market price, far beyond the reach of those who need them. When a social rented home does come up, the competition is extreme: there were 119 bids for one home in Malborough, 113 for one in Salcombe and 190 for one in Brixham.

The council has no say when a housing association decides to sell. The Social Housing Bill introduces a new disposal notification requirement intended to give local authorities a better chance of acquiring homes that would otherwise leave the sector. That is a step in the right direction and I welcome it, but it is not going to work, because being told that a home is about to be sold is not the same as being able to do anything about it. The Bill gives the council no first refusal, no priority and no right to step in ahead of a private buyer.

I would like to give a shout-out to Clay Park in Dartington, where a community land trust is delivering 39 energy-efficient homes, all for social rent, for people with local connections. We need to see this in all our villages: a few social homes in every village to keep it viable, keep young families there and allow older people to downsize. Community land trusts need to be able to build more easily. What provisions have been made in the Bill to support the work of these much-valued bodies?

15:06

[Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this vital debate. I know from years in Cornwall how big an issue the lack of affordable and council housing has become in my constituency of Truro and Falmouth.

In Cornwall, the picture is stark: we have far lower levels of council housing than other parts of the country: only 11% of our stock is social housing, and the country-wide average is 18%. Cornwall’s HomeChoice register has over 26,000 households waiting for a home, against an estimated stock of 33,000 social and affordable homes right across Cornwall. We also have 800 households in temporary and emergency accommodation. The housing revenue account has a legacy debt of £92 million from the 2012 self-financing settlement, and that severely constrains Cornwall council’s ability to build, maintain and deliver social housing. Cornwall housing also has very low rental income, the result of decisions made by previous Lib Dem and independent council administrations. Bringing rents closer to national levels through rent conversions will take time, and the lack of income from low rents has resulted in a backlog of repairs that it is really struggling to get on top of.

The Government’s extra £1 billion for the social and affordable homes programme and the preferential rates for council house borrowing are very welcome, as are the safeguards in the Bill, for example, on rights to buy new builds. In Cornwall, we have housing associations that are strategic providers, working hard to build and provide homes in Cornwall, but our HRA struggles with its debt and repairs and has no headroom to borrow. HRA reform will be crucial if we are to build council homes in Cornwall, as will making it easier for HRAs to borrow.

15:08

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.

In my constituency of Horsham, the council stock was sold off long ago to Saxon Weald, a housing association, which does a pretty good job. For years, under a series of Tory administrations, there was little council interest in building any more, so I applaud the current Lib Dem-led council for its recent announcement of 22 new homes for social rent—that is a start, at least. However, having the will is not enough; you also need the means. In this context, the Government’s main housing strategy—the standard method for allocating local targets—is having a destructive effect. It did not work for the Tory Government, and it is not working for Labour, either.

A new Horsham district local plan is passing through the system right now, but it is simply not possible for an authority in an area such as mine to require the provision of large amounts of social housing—or, indeed, any. The subsidy system, based on section 106 taxes, does not generate nearly enough, and that means that councillors cannot set a guaranteed percentage of homes for social rent in the plan, even if they want to. Such a plan would be ruled unsound by the inspector because it is financially undeliverable.  That is exactly what happened to me when I was cabinet member for planning a few years ago.

Because Horsham ranks as a relatively affluent area, it is not in line for Government subsidies. Ironically, the locations that face the highest housing costs are precisely those least likely to get any Government investment support. We have a system designed to deliver cheap housing in areas that, on average, have more cheap housing. The Government obsession with counting permissions instead of actual real-life houses has directly undermined Horsham’s ability to deliver low-cost housing. Unfeasibly high targets force the council to accept developer proposals that are optimised for quantity not affordability. In reality, private developers are principally in control of choosing the sites; councils merely edit them.

In an area like Horsham, where most of the district is farmland, the market drives developers to buy up green spaces on the edge of existing settlements. The result is a strong incentive for suburban house building, which by its nature tends to poorer affordability and wasteful land use. At the same time, we have a construction industry trapped in a boom-and-bust cycle.

The absence of consistent local authority house building makes it much harder to bring in low-cost models, such as modern modular construction, because that depends on a continued reliable delivery pipeline. That is one reason why Legal & General, which bravely invested in this market, was forced to close its modular arm a few years ago. Whatever the Government decide to do, some further change of policy is necessary. I hope the Minister will be honest and realise that the current trajectory is not going to solve anyone’s problem in any reasonable length of time.

15:11

[Alice Macdonald (Norwich North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.

Norwich was at the birth of social housing, building its first council house on Angel Road 100 years ago. Shortly after, came the Mile Cross estate, one of the first of its kind. By the 1970s, our city had a higher proportion of council housing than any other in the country. Labour in Norwich continued that delivery. We delivered Goldsmith Street—105 council homes built to Passivhaus standards and the first council housing project to win the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling prize. At the old Mile Cross depot in my constituency, a Labour council planned and funded 67 new council homes for rent, with more on the full site. Anglia Square stood undeveloped for years, then a Labour Government gave a Labour city council the funding to unlock the site and get building, delivering 1,100 homes, with a commitment that at least 50% will be affordable, many at social rent.

I pay tribute to the former Labour council leaders, including Mike Stonard, Alan Waters, Brenda Horner and Steve Morphew, for their work driving that vision forward, and Carli Harper, who has put housing at the centre of her campaign to be Mayor of Norfolk and Suffolk.

That is what delivery looks like, but it is not finished. We have to do much more to ensure that the council homes my constituents need are delivered. Since May, the Green party has run Norwich city council. I want them to succeed and not squander Labour’s legacy on housing. My message is simple: see those schemes through; do not let them slip and do not dilute them. The need is real, with almost 4,000 households in Norwich waiting for a home. Those are not statistics; they are people who have done everything right and are still waiting.

What needs to happen? First, we need investment, so I welcome the Government’s £39 billion programme for social and affordable homes. I declare an interest as the chair of the East of England housing delivery group. The region is expected to deliver 227,000 homes to support the Government’s targets over the course of this Parliament. If we are to do that, we must get our fair share of investment. Houses do not build themselves, so we need to ensure we have the skills in the pipeline to accelerate construction and deliver them. Our need for homes must be recognised as urgent.

Secondly, with others, I welcome the decision to let councils keep their right-to-buy receipts, which will make a huge difference. Thirdly, it is not enough to build homes; they have to be of good quality. People in council housing deserve high-quality homes, such as the ones Norwich Labour built on Goldsmith Street. Too many constituents still contact me with concerns about the quality of housing. Fourthly, homes must be eco-friendly. Goldsmith Street proves that warm, low-energy homes with bills tenants can afford are not a luxury; they are what council housing should be. Every new council home we build, should be built to the same ambition.

Fifthly, community is important. Mile Cross worked a century ago because it was never just about housing; it was also a community. Its centenary in 2023 was beautifully celebrated by The Common Lot. A home is only as good as what surrounds it: the bus that turns up, the GP we can book, the school within walking distance, the park, and the shop on the corner. When we build homes, we must build that community, too. The Norwich Labour party still believes that, and I know Labour in government believes that, so we must keep building to deliver the council homes that so many people still desperately need.

15:14

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Jeremy. I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate and for presenting a very persuasive argument.

One of the biggest casework inquiries that I get in my constituency concerns the shortage of housing. Birmingham, which has the largest council in Europe, has an enormous housing issue—just look at the stats. In the west midlands region, we have 7,500 homeless families living in temporary accommodation, including 15,000 children. That has an impact on families and the children, who often live many miles from their school, with parents struggling to maintain their jobs because they have to escort their children to school. It will have a dramatic effect on our future generations. Birmingham has the youngest community, and I fear the impact that a lack of affordable homes will have on our next generation.

There are 65,000 families on the social housing waiting list. I am sure the Minister will say that the West Midlands combined authority has received somewhere in the region of £400 million to develop and build 3,000 additional homes, which of course is welcome, but when we contrast the numbers with the requirements, it really is a drop in the ocean. There will also be private developers, but one of the biggest issues that I see and that my constituents feel is that it is not just about building homes anywhere just to meet the quota, but about building communities and ensuring we have the right infrastructure: GP surgeries, medical care facilities and local shopping centres. A whole infrastructure needs to be thought of.

Planning is another big issue. The Labour Government often say they champion devolution and localisation and want local people involved in decision making. However, Birmingham is being asked to be anti-devolution, because planning powers could be given to the regional mayor. If that happens, it will take away that community on the ground who want homes where they fulfil all the criteria.

May I quickly ask the Minister a question? I know we have limited time. The Perry Barr Village was developed at a cost to taxpayers of £700 million. It was sold to Legal and General at a loss to the taxpayer of £350 million. Will the Minister inquire into what happened with that loss of £350 million to Birmingham taxpayers?

15:18

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing this debate.

I want to speak up for Portsmouth today, a city that at its peak had 27,000 council homes and now has fewer than 16,000. Our city is in the grip of a housing crisis, with too many people struggling to find a secure and affordable home. We have a waiting list of almost 3,000 households, with almost 50% of those being exceptional or urgent priority. Yet in 2024-25 Portsmouth built just 40 new homes—not 40 social homes, but 40 new homes in total. In the same period, only 15 units for social rent were added to the council stock, with just six more being started. Behind those figures are families waiting for a home, young people struggling to find somewhere they can afford, and residents facing the insecurity of unaffordable rent or moving from temporary accommodation to temporary accommodation.

I know personally what a council home means. I grew up in one and many of my aunties and uncles, and my own parents were born and lived in council housing. For my family it meant stability, security and the opportunity to build a future. Council housing is more than bricks and mortar. It gives people a foundation in life, a community and a place to call home, and every family deserves one. That is why I am proud that this Labour Government have committed to the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. We are invigorating council house building and taking action to protect existing social housing, but that national ambition must translate into homes on the ground in Portsmouth. More families need the security I experienced growing up in a safe, affordable home, and the chance to build a better future.

Cannock Chase and historical Norwich city council have shown what can be achieved when a council creates opportunity, and I commend their vision. Portsmouth should look at what works elsewhere and how we can translate that to my city. Will the Minister meet me to discuss what practical support the Government can provide to help Portsmouth city council overcome barriers to planning, building, developing derelict sites, regenerating empty homes and unlocking investment to deliver the council houses and social rented homes my residents desperately need?

Portsmouth city council must act; my residents cannot afford to wait any longer to have a secure place to call home.

15:20

[Chris Kane (Stirling and Strathallan) (Lab)]

I want to offer a Scottish perspective on the subject. In May 2024, the Scottish Parliament declared a national housing emergency. That was a significant admission, but declaring an emergency is not the same as resolving one. More than two years later, the figures make uncomfortable reading.

Across Scotland, more than 10,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. That is the highest number on record. There are almost 35,000 open homelessness cases, which is also a record high. Last year, there were more than 21,000 recorded instances in which local authorities failed to offer temporary accommodation to households entitled to it, an increase of almost a third.

Those figures come from the Scottish Government’s own statistics, a couple more of which came out just this morning. The “Housing Statistics for Scotland” report found that house building has fallen by 8% in the last year and we have more than 10,000 council houses sitting vacant, often as a result of lack of funds or people to bring them back into use.

Housing is a constant feature of my constituency casework. We hear from families in overcrowded homes and people living in unsuitable accommodation. Most express a lack of confidence that they will ever find somewhere appropriate to live. As a former council leader, I know that providing good council housing takes more than ambition; it takes resources and power, something that this Labour Government are looking to devolve to local communities in England. However, in Scotland, the SNP is centralising rather than devolving powers.

I have seen what can be achieved when these things come together because Stirling has been ranked first in the UK for roof-top solar installations relative to households. Our long-running programme of installing solar panels on council houses contributed significantly to that achievement. Successive council administrations invested in improving housing stock, helping tenants with energy costs and delivering environmental benefits.

I also want to highlight the importance of housing to rural economies. Stirling council has recently allocated UK Government funding to new houses in Tyndrum at the northern end of my constituency. Local tourism businesses tell me they struggle to recruit staff because prospective employees cannot find affordable accommodation. If a hotel or restaurant cannot recruit because workers have nowhere to live, housing becomes an economic as well as a social issue. In small rural communities, even a handful of new, affordable homes can make an enormous difference, but much more needs to be done.

I welcome the UK Government’s commitment to increasing council and social house building in England. We must share lessons from across the United Kingdom because devolution should never mean that we stop learning from one another. Ultimately, the test of housing policy is not how many targets we announce, strategies we publish or emergencies we declare, but how many families finally receive the keys to a safe, secure and affordable home. For far too many of my constituents, that day still feels too distant.

To conclude with a bit of history, it pains me to admit that Scotland’s first pioneering council housing development was in Dundee, rather than in my constituency of Stirling and Strathallan, but I was fascinated to discover that, even before the Stirling houses were occupied in May 1920, the Commons was debating their affordability. In April 1920, Labour MP Alexander Wilkie questioned the Secretary of State for Scotland about rents that threatened to price out the very working people the homes were intended to help. More than a century later, we are still grappling with that same fundamental challenge of providing good homes that people can afford.

15:23

[Lee Pitcher (Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. Council housing saved my family’s life. Council housing gave me a life. Council housing meant that a once homeless lad got to be here to fight for everybody, to ensure that there is no homelessness in this country ever again.

When we talk about council housing delivery, most people think about building from scratch, but there are other options. Buying and refurbing existing long-term empty houses and buildings means we can increase the housing stock at a lower cost and, crucially, we can do it faster.

When we talk about housing, it is easy to think primarily about the housing market, the economic impacts, the cost of mortgages or rents, or the cost of living, but we are also talking about whether people have a permanent home or not.

When we talk about homelessness, we often think first about rough sleeping. Yet homelessness takes many forms, and family homelessness cannot be overlooked. That is often not on the streets; it is whole families with children living on one mattress at a friend or relative’s house, as I did at 15 years old, or moving between a series of bed and breakfasts and other emergency—supposedly temporary—accommodation, which can last for years. Because it is not visible, and because we do not see the impact, we often do not treat it with the urgency it deserves.

At the end of March this year, there were 177,530 children living in temporary accommodation in England. In Doncaster in 2025, we had more than 200 children living without a permanent roof over their heads. Perhaps even more concerning is that more than 22,000 families with children have been living in temporary accommodation for between two and five years. For some children, that could be the majority of their lives.

There are 7,800 active households on the register in Doncaster right now. That insecurity of not having a place that is permanent can be devastating. It affects children’s education, their physical and mental health, their relationships and their opportunities later in life. A permanent home is about so much more than having somewhere to sleep; it is about having somewhere you belong. I can absolutely vouch for that, having had lived experience of it.

There are more than 300,000 long-term empty homes across England. Acquiring long-term empty houses for social housing could deliver more than 8,000 additional social rented homes by June 2029, requiring 38% less Government grant per property than new build alternatives. That means more homes for the same level of investment, and families in them much more quickly. When we have families spending years in temporary accommodation, we cannot afford to overlook opportunities to deliver permanent homes much more quickly. It also makes sense financially: councils are spending billions each year on temporary accommodation, but investing in permanent housing can reduce our reliance on those arrangements.

Ultimately, the success of our housing programmes must be measured not just by the number of homes delivered, but by the number of families who are able to leave homelessness behind and build secure, stable lives in the future. We need to deliver those homes, and we need to deliver them as fast as we possibly can.

15:27

[Joe Morris (Hexham) (Lab)]

Sir Jeremy, it is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship.

Across the span of one of England’s largest constituencies, housing, or the lack of it, is one of the main drivers of people coming to my constituency surgeries. It is one of the main drivers of people in desperate need of a place to call home, as my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) has just movingly set out. It is an issue that needs to be taken far more seriously, not just in this place but across the country. The particular lack of access to affordable and social housing in some of our most rural communities is something that has escaped much of the national debate in recent years.

Unfortunately, I must say that the Morpeth Conservatives, who run Northumberland county council, are currently engaged in what I can only describe as an ongoing misinformation exercise about the impact of trying to provide more housing. It is very clear to me that what is needed across Northumberland is appropriate development of the homes that are needed to allow people to build lives and communities, and to keep those communities together and functioning, but also to provide long-term stability to young people growing up in those communities, so that they know they will be able to have a life where they have grown up, should they wish to, rather than growing up with their noses pressed against the windows of communities that they will never be able to be part of because they cannot get a home there.

I will not keep colleagues’ attention for too long, but the crucial thing, from where I stand, is delivering those homes in areas where people can have access to them, where they can be rented at a reasonable rate, and, crucially, ensuring that they are not removed from circulation but are accessible to local people, so that those people can work in the pubs, shops and businesses that keep the lifeblood of our communities moving.

Without that, we will continue to see younger people forced out of rural communities, forced to leave their families and unable to care for their elderly relatives. That is something that comes up far too often—time and again—in my regular constituency surgeries.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

I thank the Back-Bench speakers for their co-operation and discipline. We now come to the Front-Bench speeches, beginning with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

15:29

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Thank you, Sir Jeremy. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) not only on securing the debate but on the powerful and thoughtful way in which he commenced it, as usual. I also congratulate the other 15 hon. Members who contributed. I cannot disagree with any of the points made powerfully by them, and I hope that the Minister is listening.

I declare an interest as a member of the Cornwall Rural Housing Association and as a past chief executive, now volunteer board member, of the Cornwall Community Land Trust, which is a registered provider of affordable homes across Cornwall and on the Isles of Scilly. I noticed that we were not only debating the issue of council housing but straying into questions about the integrity of the planning and development system. That system is of course critical to delivering the big house building programme that the Government have promised. It is clear that in many parts of the country house building, particularly of social and affordable homes, has stalled.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

An issue we have seen in my constituency is developers citing viability assessments to try to renege on the commitments that they originally outlined to deliver social and affordable homes. They would rather pay something called a commuted sum—in effect a fine—that does not actually help to deliver social homes at scale. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister should look at the way the commuted sum is assessed so that we do not lose the opportunity for social homes to be delivered?

[Andrew George]

Indeed. There are many ways in which Ministers need to look at our whole housing planning system. It operates almost as if local needs were an inconvenient afterthought. Despite tinkering at the edges of the planning system, successive Governments have left it so that it still rewards land value speculators more than council or charitable housing providers; puts developer profit—which can be set at a level of 20% when valuation of developments is undertaken—before affordable homes; and turns a blind eye to the transfer of thousands of homes intended for permanent occupancy into property investment portfolios as second homes for recreational and holiday use. I want to reflect on the speeches of my two constituency neighbours, the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) and for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon). I put on record my strong support for the case they made for investment in Cornwall’s desperately needed social and affordable housing stock.

This week’s announcement of further investment in social and affordable homes—I am sure the Minister will repeat it—is of course welcome. It is on top of the £39 billion in the social and affordable homes programme that was announced last year. However, those investments are dwarfed by the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money gifted through various tax reliefs and loopholes, and by private capital that, in my part of the world, drives investment into holiday lets created when local tenants are evicted to make way for that investment. It is bad enough that such tax subsidies are granted at all, but not all those subsidies—which local authorities are obliged to grant—are compensated for by the Treasury. That contributes to a growing black hole in local government finances and leads to cuts in essential local services.

I am bound to take this opportunity to draw attention to the fact that I was fortunate in the private Member’s Bill ballot. My Homes and Planning Bill will come before Parliament again on Friday 13 November. I hope that all those who spoke in this debate and their colleagues will come along to support the Bill, as it stands a good chance of being enacted. It provides the tools with which the Government and local communities can deliver the kind of affordable homes that we have been talking about, which are desperately needed. Our housing system is a shameful display of just how wide the growing inequality is in this country.

We need to understand better why the planning and housing policies of successive Governments have failed. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire articulately put it, planning policies are based on house building targets, but they have not delivered. Policy designers seem to have overlooked the fact that house building targets are merely a means to an end—the end being, of course, to meet housing need.

My own area of Cornwall is a classic example of an area where planning policy has failed. It is one of the fastest growing places in the United Kingdom; indeed, in the last 60 years, it has almost trebled its housing stock. And yet over that same period the housing problems of local people have got worse, as we have already heard from my constituency neighbours, the hon. Members for Truro and Falmouth, and for Camborne and Redruth. So we know that simply having house building—particularly if it is building the wrong type of housing, which is simply for wealthy people or for investment purposes—does not actually help to meet housing needs.

The housing policy of this Government—like, to be fair, the housing policies of successive Governments—is based on a delusion that private developers are prepared to collude with Government to drive down the price of their finished product. Local authorities should be given the option to set targets to meet local need, rather than simply being told to go out and build homes, and to allow those homes to be built.

Indeed, what the Government have done has made matters worse, although I am sure that it was done with the best intentions. As the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire implied, perhaps Ministers became so sidetracked or distracted by, or even obsessed with, facing down anti-development nimbys—rightly; of course they should do that—that they did not consider that imposing unachievable house building targets overnight on local authorities might become counterproductive, because 18 months ago local authorities suddenly found themselves unable to demonstrate that they had carefully identified and consulted on a sufficient five-year land supply. As a result of that, development opportunities on the edges of our communities, instead of being delivered under a rural exceptions policy for affordable homes, are now being granted by planning inspectors, because there is not a five-year land supply for unaffordable homes. So, we have lost that opportunity and the policy has been totally counterproductive.

The purpose of my private Member’s Bill is to give communities the right to buy, so that a community asset becomes land or buildings that could help a community to deliver affordable homes. This is community-led housing of the type that my hon. Friend the Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden), for example, has talked about.

Also, there should be new planning limits on second homes and holiday homes, so that someone would have to apply for planning permission to convert a property from a permanent home to a holiday home or second home. I hope that Government Members will come along on 13 November to support my private Member’s Bill, because the Minister for Housing and Planning, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook)—he is obviously not here in Westminster Hall today because he is engaged with the Social Housing Bill, which is very relevant to our debate today—has indicated that he is unable to support my Bill. Consequently, we have a debate on our hands.

The Liberal Democrats would increase the building of new and affordable and social homes, and we would make sure, on a number of fronts, to make homes warmer and cheaper and easier to heat, with a 10-year emergency upgrade programme to ensure that all new homes are zero carbon, as well as giving control of right to buy to local authorities, which will be enabled to vary discounts based on local need, or—as a last resort—to suspend the right to buy all together.

In view of the short time I have left, I will not list all the policies that would deliver the utopia that a Liberal Democrat Government would undoubtedly deliver as far as housing is concerned. However, I will urge the Minister, particularly as we have the vehicle of the Social Housing Bill in Committee at the moment, to take heed of what his colleagues have said to him this afternoon and to accept amendments to improve that Bill.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (in the Chair)]

In the interests of order, I should probably make it clear that other private Members’ Bills are available.

15:38

[Sarah Bool (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy, and to take part in this debate about the delivery of council housing. It is a debate on a very important topic and I thank the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) for securing it.

Building more homes is a critical mission for anyone governing England and Wales today, in order to make the dream of home ownership a reality for even more hard-working families. With a record number of people homeless, and with 177,530 children and 49,120 adult households in temporary accommodation, clearly the priority must be to build more council homes. That is what the Opposition want to happen, but that is what the Government are currently failing to do.

Let us take a look at the Government’s own data. Just 208,600 net additional dwellings were added in England in Labour’s first year of power. That was a 6% drop from 2023-24, which was the last Conservative Government’s final year in office. Of these, 190,600 were new homes, a fall of 8,000, around 4%, on 2023-24. Taken together, the Government are on track to build around 400,000 fewer homes than they promised at the election, meaning yet another broken promise made to the British people. The Government know that—the Minister’s boss, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), admitted this on national media.

That poor showing on homes directly impacts the pressing issue we are debating today, which is the delivery of council housing. We heard the Prime Minister proudly making his summer promise of the comeback of the council house, but what little details we do know on that policy show that the money he has earmarked would equal just 15,494 homes a year, barely 5% of the Government’s annual housing target. That is in exchange for another £79 billion added to the housing subsidy bill, despite the fact that the UK already spends the most on housing allowances as a percentage of GDP of any OECD country.

One might have been forgiven for thinking that the aptly-titled Social Housing Bill introduced earlier this year might have been the answer to get local authorities, the Government, industry, and the nation building again. However, as is becoming a theme in this Government, we are left severely disappointed by the reality. The Government have presented a Bill to the House that fails to build a single new council house. Instead of making social and affordable housing sites viable and pushing developments through the pipeline at pace—the Government love to use that phrase—to get people off the street and help children into permanent homes, they have chosen to use up parliamentary, Government and civil service time on an ideological assault on right-to-buy. It is a shameful course of action, and far from what the 1.34 million people on the social housing wait list need.

Even worse is that the Government know this Social Housing Bill will not deliver new homes. According tousb data from the Minister’s own impact assessment, in 2026-27 the pre-November 2024 baseline was 8,050 right-to-buy sales, leading to 5,450 replacement homes. The document goes on to show that if this Bill were to pass and the legacy impacts were to wind down in the period of 2031-35, annual right-to-buy sales would fall to around 1,100 a year, with around 1,450 replacement homes. That means that by their own analysis and admission, the Government will be overseeing a housing system in which there would be 4,000 fewer new social homes funded every year. Moreover, research conducted by the House of Lords Library shows that only a net 3% of social homes become available each year to new tenancies. That means that around 90 additional homes will be available for a new tenant each year instead of 5,000.

The Bill would not only mean no new homes built, but would actively prevent them from being delivered. The Government really must refocus their efforts on building more council housing, and that requires serious reforms to the viability of sites for social and affordable homes. We are halfway through a Parliament in which we have spent much time debating the Planning and Infrastructure Act 2025, various updates to the national planning policy framework and the aforementioned Bill, yet after all of that we are still left without a clear route to building more homes. Projections from the Government show they will have managed to build just 26% of their target in 50% of the time.

[Alice Macdonald]

Obviously we are in government now, but will the hon. Lady reflect on her party’s policies in terms of not letting councils keep right-to-buy receipts or the fact that nearly 200,000 homes were lost in one decade under the Conservatives?

[Sarah Bool]

Of course, it is always important to reflect on any of the legacies but we have to talk about the here and now. It has rightly been said that this Government are in control; the Social Housing Bill is supposed to unlock the system and yet it will not do that. Our questions should be directly to the Minister about how the Government will unlock the potential that everyone in this room wants to see. That is why the Conservative party proposes taking £50,000 off the cost of building a new home in England and Wales by cutting back on regulations and taxes; backing a genuinely brownfield-first approach to see new homes built on the existing 1.41 million sites viable for development; building, not blocking; a genuine council house comeback; and supporting aspiration.

[Joe Morris]

On that point, will the hon. Lady give way?

[Sarah Bool]

I am just concluding. I call on the Minister to commit to changing the Social Housing Bill, to back the delivery of council housing and to help bring the shocking number of people in temporary accommodation down. That is the only way to see more council houses built, to see more people into safe and affordable accommodation and to get Britain building.

15:45

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jim McMahon)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) on securing this important debate on the delivery of council housing. I appreciate his passion for the subject following the debate that he brought forward last September on the provision of council housing. I also thank all Members for their rich contributions. They really reflect the challenges that exist across the country.

Nearly 180,000 children are in temporary accommodation in this country, and over 1.3 million households are on local authority housing registers. Members across the House will agree that we cannot allow that to continue, because behind every one of those statistics is a person, a family and a child. The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Housing Minister and the whole Government are clear on our resolve and intention to tackle the issue. We are also clear that councils have a leading role to play.

Under the leadership of the Prime Minister, the Government are committed to delivering the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period. That level of ambition is necessary because of the scale of the challenge that we are facing. This Government are removing barriers and backing councils to use all the levers at their disposal to deliver safe and decent homes at a scale not seen for decades.

We have taken decisive steps to improve councils’ financial resources, capacity and capability to invest in new and existing homes, and the social and affordable homes programme funding is putting councils at the heart of that delivery. It is the biggest long-term investment in social and affordable homes in recent memory. Initial allocations under the programme were announced in August and, for the first time, three councils outside of London—Newcastle, Eastleigh and Cambridge—were awarded strategic partnership status. The Greater London Authority has also offered allocations of at least £6 billion to providers of social and affordable housing, with 60% going to local councils.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds Central and Headingley) (Lab/Co-op)]

Leeds is one of the biggest local authorities in England. We have 27,000 households on the waiting list for council housing, 5,000 of which are in priority need. So many constituents come to me saying that they just cannot afford private rented homes. The main issue is that there is just not enough council housing. I welcome the Government saying that they are building more houses, but there needs to be specific help for Leeds, including both more funding for land remediation and the purchasing of city centre developments that are unoccupied or under-occupied. What additional support can the Government provide for that type of housing?

[Jim McMahon]

Leeds city council is ambitious for its city and is a key member of the West Yorkshire combined authority. It is doing a lot of work, not just on housing but on bringing forward brownfield sites through growth and infrastructure funding to make sure that, as many Members have said, housing goes alongside that wider community infrastructure.

In addition to the funding that I have just mentioned, over £21 billion is still to allocate, which will be prioritised for social homes, particularly council homes. That reflects our commitment to increasing council house delivery. To further improve financial capacity, deliver new supply and invest in existing homes, we have committed to a 10-year social housing rent policy with a convergence mechanism. That gives councils much needed certainty on their income to enable them to increase and manage their housing portfolios efficiently and effectively.

[Jim Shannon]

We also need to remember that the Government are committed to building a million-plus social homes over the next period of time. Over the last 12 months, house prices in Northern Ireland have consistently risen by a greater rate than anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Housing rents are also going up. Will the Minister share the Government’s strategy to address the social housing need with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland to ensure that we can learn something from the process that the Government are putting forward?

[Jim McMahon]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point about the different approaches across the UK and how we can all learn from each other on what works, as well as learn from the areas where it perhaps did not go quite as planned. I will make sure that I pass his comments on to the Housing Minister to have conversations across Governments. 

We have also provided greater certainty on future costs associated with the decent homes standard and the minimum energy efficiency standards. We have allocated more than £1 billion through the warm homes social housing fund to improve the energy efficiency of social homes. Quality matters, as rightly outlined by my hon. Friends the Members for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury).

In addition to revenue, we know how important borrowing and the capacity to borrow are for councils’ delivery plans. Since 2023, a preferential borrowing rate has been available from the Public Works Loan Board for council house building. This rate will be extended and we will be announcing more details in due course.

We continue to work closely with councils and the wider sector to understand the remaining barriers to council house building and investment, including the impact of the housing revenue account debt and borrowing rates. We have also increased the threshold at which councils must open a housing revenue account from 200 homes to 1,000 homes. That is enabling small councils to deliver more homes without incurring additional operating costs.

We have also heard from councils that workforce shortages, skills gaps and capacity pressures will constrain their abilities to build. That is why we are investing a further £46 million over the next three years through capacity to build funding, on top of the £17 million already invested since 2025. That will help councils develop an ambitious pipeline, strengthen specialist housing capacity and make the most of the Government’s wider investment in council house building. These gaps have been identified by Members in the debate today, including the hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Hexham (Joe Morris), for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham).

Finally, we are taking decisive action to reform the right-to-buy scheme, which has acted as a break on council confidence to invest in new social housing for too long. We are reforming the scheme to ensure that more homes are built than lost, while maintaining an important route for social housing tenants to own their own homes, which was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Linsey Farnsworth).

My right hon. Friend the Housing Minister is at this very moment in the Bill Committee, debating the detail of our reforms. The Social Housing Bill builds on the reforms to cash discounts that we implemented in 2024 to ensure that more social homes are protected, while removing powerful disincentives to build. Notably, we are tightening the eligibility requirements and exempting newly built social housing from the scheme for 35 years to ensure that homes are not sold before councils have recovered their investment.

[Ayoub Khan]

The Minister will have heard me talk about the £400 million being invested through the regional authority for 3,000 homes. I contrast that with the more than £700 million invested of taxpayer money in the Perry Barr athletes’ village, which was then sold at a loss to the taxpayer of £350 million. Can the Minister assure me that that matter will be investigated?

[Jim McMahon]

Today is not about getting into the rights and wrongs of individual programmes at local authority level. The hon. Member and I have had many conversations about Birmingham city council in the past and I am sure that will continue. The matter here today is how central Government ensure that we have the framework, the incentives and the funding to get councils building council homes and social homes in their area.

In addition, we have enabled councils to retain 100% of receipts from right-to-buy sales and provided greater flexibility on how those receipts can be used. That includes permitting councils to combine receipts with grant funding to unlock capacity for house building.

These measures are already bearing fruit. Councils delivered around 10,600 homes in 2024-25, which is the highest level since current records began in 1991-92. Our package of right-to-buy reforms is estimated to deliver a net gain of around 18,000 social homes over the next 10 years, compared with a pre-reform baseline of a loss of 26,000 homes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) mentioned empty homes. We are strengthening powers to bring empty homes back into use by reforming empty dwelling management orders. We are reducing the period for which a property must be empty before it becomes eligible from two years to six months under that programme.

We know that we must go further and faster to deliver the good-quality, affordable homes that people need. We also know that councils share that ambition. The Government are committed to backing councils to build at a scale not seen for decades, and to build the right homes in the right places. We will continue to work with all levels of local and regional government to turn that ambition into homes and better outcomes for local people, so that everyone across the country has access to a home that is decent, secure and affordable.

15:54

[Chris Hinchliff]

I thank all hon. Members for contributing to a wide-ranging and passionate debate.

I note that the Minister did not quite answer the one question I left him with, which was about the number of council houses that the Government are projecting to achieve. A quick search on my phone during the debate suggested that 47,000 council houses were built in 1979, which I suspect is when most of us would suggest the post-war period came to an end. I am genuinely interested to know whether the Government are aiming for something like that figure per year.

More generally, I would like the Minister to take away two key points from the debate. First, we must move away from a failed housing delivery model in this country. It seems we have accepted for a long time that we can afford to build only unaffordable homes. It is a ludicrous failure and we must put an end to it. Secondly, we heard so many times about the 1.3 million people in this country on waiting lists and the nearly 180,000 children in temporary accommodation. It must be one of the most important yardsticks by which the Government measure themselves that, by the time we come to the next general election, those figures are no longer rising but have substantially fallen.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the delivery of council housing.

15:56

Sitting suspended.