A new report from the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government has shown that the construction of new social homes for rent has fallen by 80% over the past decade.
Over one million families are on the waiting lists for housing for social rent, which at the current rate of construction will take 70 years to house everyone waiting.
London Boroughs have added just 777 additional dwellings for social rent in 2017-2018.
“These figures confirm the disastrous fall in the number of new affordable homes for social rent under the Conservatives,” said John Healey, the shadow housing secretary.
Community Housing Cymru (CHC) has blamed austerity for the lower number of homes being built.
Whilst the Welsh council had £159 million in 2010 to spend on planning departments in Wales, this figure has dropped to £77.4 million in 2017-18.
The chief executive of the charity Shelter, Polly Neate, said the gap between those waiting for social housing and construction taking place to meet this demand was unacceptable.
“This just isn’t acceptable when nearly 280,000 people are homeless in England today,” she said.
Theresa May said in her party conference speech last month that she would scrap the cap on local authority borrowing for the construction of new homes.
The chairman of the Local Government Association, Lord Porter, said on the prime minister’s announcement: “Today’s speech by the prime minister shows that the government has heard our argument that councils must be part of the solution to our chronic housing shortage.”
“It is fantastic that the government has accepted our long-standing call to scrap the housing borrowing cap. We look forward to working with councils and the government to build those good quality affordable new homes and infrastructure that everyone in our communities need.”
“Our national housing shortage is one of the most pressing issues we face and it is clear that only an increase of all types of housing – including those for affordable or social rent – will solve the housing crisis.”
“The last time this country built homes at the scale that we need now was in the 1970s when councils built more than 40 per cent of them,” he added.
