Government needs to invest

Government need to invest significantly in tackling housing crisis

Government needs to invest significantly more in genuinely affordable homes and be far bolder in its support for councils if it is to meet the ambition to deliver 300,000 new homes a year, according to a major study by the TCPA, funded by the Nationwide Foundation.

The report has revealed appetite for innovation from councils right across the country, but also concerns from many councils about their ability to deliver genuinely affordable homes available at social-rent levels.

The research, involving a survey of 76 councils, found that social rent is the most in-demand housing tenure among over half of English councils, although in 2016/17 just 5,380 new social rented homes were built in England.2 Further to this, 80% of councils said that increasing grant levels would encourage councils to build more affordable homes, and 2/3 of councils said that lifting the Housing Revenue Account (HRA) borrowing cap would allow them to build more homes (which the government has done in the budget, although this is limited to areas with ‘high affordability pressures’).