Chancellor pledges more than £5bn to combat the housing crisis

Chancellor Rachel Reeves this afternoon said the Government will invest more than £5bn to deliver its housing plan, which features a headline promise to build 1.5 million homes over the course of this Parliament.

She said the Government’s Budget will increase the Affordable Homes Programme to £3.1bn, providing £3bn worth of support and guarantees to increase the supply of homes and support small housebuilders.

Reeves promised investment to renovate sites across the country.

And she said the supply of affordable housing – to address the current “desperate shortage” – is set to increase under provisions in the Budget.

The Government will reduce Right to Buy Discounts. Local authorities, meanwhile, will retain receipts from the sale of any social housing so it can be reinvested into their existing stock and new supply.

Reeves said the Government aims to hire hundreds of new planning officers to give local authorities more capacity to handle planning applications.

The Budget statement explains: “Housing delivery cannot be achieved at the scale the country requires without reforms to the planning system and ensuring sufficient capacity exists to support wider economic growth.

“The Government will provide £46m of additional funding to support recruitment and training of 300 graduates and apprentices into local planning authorities, accelerate large sites that are stuck in the system, and boost and upskill local planning authority capacity to deliver the government’s wider reform agenda.”

The Government says it will engage with the housing industry over the autumn on the mortgage guarantee scheme.

It plans to make this scheme permanently available to support lending at 95%, “ending the stop-start availability of the scheme and giving lenders confidence throughout the cycle, while making it easier for first‑time buyers to realise the dream of home ownership.”

The Budget features a commitment to unblock delivery of homes. The Government adds it has confirmed £56m to unlock over 2,000 new homes at Liverpool Central Docks, along with a £25m investment in a new joint venture to deliver 3,000 energy‑efficient homes across the country, with a target of 100% of these being affordable.

Finally, the Chancellor pledged £1bn to accelerate the removal of dangerous cladding on homes, following the report into the Grenfell Tower disaster.

This promise includes new investment to speed up remediation of social housing.