In the 1950s, councils were building almost 200,000 new council homes a year, but half of councils do not currently own or build their own homes.
In 2024-25, there were just over 12,000 homes built for social rent – the highest since 2013 -14, but organisations like the National Housing Federation and homeless charities have previously agreed that at least 90,000 social homes would need to be built each year to meet demand.
Social housing provides affordable homes at a low cost, managed by social landlords. It includes affordable rented properties as well as low-cost home ownership, such as shared ownership, and can be provided by local authorities and housing associations.
Charlie Berry, policy manager at housing charity Shelter, said the announcement was “not near the level we need to truly tackle that backlog and end homelessness”.
But she said it was a “significant improvement”, and added she would “love” Rayner to commit to a target of how many socially rented homes will be built annually.
As well as promise and funding to build more social homes, the Labour government pledged to build 1.5 million homes by 2029.
Despite statements like “build, baby, build”, coined by former housing secretary Steve Reed, so far Labour is not on track to meet that target.
BBC Verify has been tracking the target using government statistics on the number of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) issued by each local authority. Each newly created dwelling must have an EPC by law, making it the most timely indicator of new homes being built.
The latest EPC data suggests about 203,000 new homes were delivered in England in the 12 months ending June 2026. To reach the government’s target of 1.5 million homes over five years, there would need to be at least 300,000.
Conservative shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly described the announcement as “sleight of hand”, saying: “The small print shows homes won’t have to be delivered until 2039.”
He said: “Fewer homes will be delivered than previous programmes in this Parliament as social rent is more expensive. Labour have scaled back their affordable housing programme and expect us to thank them for it.”
The Conservatives have said they would end the provision of social housing for foreign nationals in England if they win power at the next election which they estimated would “free up” 228,144 homes for “British families”. On Monday, Reform announced similar plans to prioritise British-born workers under 35 when allocating social housing if it were to enter government.
Shelter said there were “already strict rules on who can access social housing” and neither plan addressed the underlying cause of the problems.