PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Social Housing: Local Authority Funding - 24 November 2025 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

We have taken decisive steps to support councils to invest in social housing, including committing to a new 10-year rent settlement and the launch of our £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. We are very clear that we want to see councils increase the level of social housing.

Will the Secretary of State tell us a bit more about the additional support that the Government can offer local councils, like Swindon, to invest in existing council housing stock, especially in areas like Penhill, with flats that desperately need investment?

The Government are supporting councils to invest in new and existing social housing through the new 10-year rent settlement and our £39 billion social and affordable homes programme. A further £14 million is being provided this year to boost council house building skills and capacity. In addition, the warm homes social housing fund will provide £1.2 billion from 2025 to 2028, and we have committed over £1 billion between 2026 and 2030 to support cladding remediation for social landlords, ensuring equal access to building safety funds.

We are facing a national affordability crisis, but handing out planning permissions like confetti did not bring down prices under the last Government and there is zero reason to expect it will do any better this time. Does the Minister accept that relying on private developers to bring down prices can never work, because they simply stop building whenever prices start to fall?

Respectfully, I wish to correct the hon. Gentleman. The reason we are allocating £39 billion to build more social and affordable housing—the biggest amount in a generation—is precisely to avoid the very scenario to which he refers.