The Policy Hub

Social Housing


Fingertip Facts
Main Page

See All Facts
On Single Page


Click on a fingertip fact to link to the source data




Housing associations have taken over the role of providing Social Housing

In 2010, George Osbourne cut the annual capital funding budget for housing associations from £3bn to £450m

The 2010 cut in funding to Housing Associations amounted to a cut 15.3bn billion over the next 6 year period

The government announced in September 2018 extra spending of £2bn for the period of upto 2029.

The goverment will have deprived housing associations of 30bn by 2029 and if inflation is factored in, in the region of 35bn

When the additional funding was announced, it was made clear the money would be for affordable housing. This is not the same as social housing

£24bn is paid to private landlords per year in housing benefit. A large increase in the budget for social housing would remove this cost and create a social asset

Private landlords receive more in one year in housing benefit than social housing will receive in 20 years

Much of the private stock of housing is of poor quality. Social housing could remedy this, providing good housing and making money for the state

There are more than 1.8 million households waiting for a social home of which there are 1.2 million in England alone

Many of those on housing waiting lists have been on them for five or more years

Social house building from 1980 fell off a cliff and by 1990 there was practically no social housing being built by local authorities

In 1990 Housing Association building was higher than local authority building for the first time, but has never come near to filling the gap with the loss of local authority building

As of March 2018 there was 63,000 sales of social homes as opposed to just 16,000 new builds

In the 2017 budget Phillip Hammond announced a large fund to increase social homes building. This fund was later retracted and used to prop up a failing NHS

Theresa May has said on a number of occassions that the Conservatives are building one for one (one house built for one house sold under the right to buy scheme). The true figures are 1 built for every 7 sold

The number of new government-funded houses built for social rent each year has plummeted by 97 per cent since the Conservatives took office in 2010

More than 36,700 new socially rented homes were built with government money in England in 2010-11 – the year in which the Tories came to power in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. By the 2016-17, financial year that finished in April, that figure had fallen to just 1,102

From 2010-18 the total number of "affordable" homes built per year with government money more than halved – from 55,909 to 27,792

The Conservatives were forced to U-turn during the the 2017 election campaign after Theresa May announced the Tories would deliver "a constant supply of new homes for social rent”. The Government was later forced to admit that the new homes would, in fact, be the significantly more expensive “affordable” homes

In 2017 the Tories handed £281,000,000 back to the Treasury that was for social housing and was not spent

At the height of funding for housing associations they were still only building houses at half the target

Housing associations, particularly those with charity status, are not answerable to government

Some Housing Association chief executives are taking home six figure salaries

Following the Right to Buy act home ownership grew from 55% of the population in 1980 to 67% by 1990

By 2015/16, home ownership had declined from a high of 70.9% in 2003 back to 62.9%, the lowest level since 1985

The Treasury received £28 billion from the right to buy scheme (note the government now pays 24bn a year to private landlords in housing benefit)

More than 40% of houses sold in London under the right to buy scheme are now owned by private landlords

Tens of millions of pounds are being paid by local authorities to rent former council homes in order to house growing numbers of homeless families

Some councils have bought back their former homes at more than six times the amount they sold them for

In a gig economy where more and more working people require housing support to provide a home private landlords extract wealth out of the local economy and restrict councils from having the funds to expand and improve social housing


Join and Follow

Retrieved from "https://thepolicyhub.org.uk/wiki/Housing_Social_Fingertip_Facts?oldid=19092"