5 things we learned from this year’s Biggest Council House Builders

When we spoke to individual councils while compiling this story, it was very clear that many had a strong belief they should be building the most affordable possible rented housing. This was grounded in data from their own waiting list and analysis of housing need.

Lewisham Council, for example, came second overall in the ranking. James Walsh, the council’s cabinet member for inclusive regeneration and planning, told Inside Housing that the council has a “laser focus” on housebuilding, driven by housing need.

He says: “For every child that’s in temporary accommodation, that’s affecting their education, it’s affecting their life outcomes, and we want to get them out as quickly as possible.”

3. Questions over the future of council-owned companies

Homes completed by council-owned companies fell as a proportion of the total programme this year, and some of those who delivered the highest numbers in 2024-25 are winding up their companies. However, other councils continue to see value in these companies, including some county councils starting from scratch without being landlords themselves.

Salford’s mayor Paul Dennett, for example, tells Inside Housing: “Our own housing company, Dérive, has provided both social rent homes and affordable homes for our residents. This is something we’re very ambitious with and it’s a key priority for the council.”

4. Councils are now buying thousands of existing homes, as well as building new ones

For the first time this year, we also asked councils how many existing homes they have acquired. We added these questions because some councils themselves flagged to us in their FOI responses that they were buying more homes than they were building.

Many of these homes are buybacks of homes formerly sold under the Right to Buy, a practice which has generated some critical scrutiny in recent weeks, with The Big Issue running headlines about the “economic madness” of buying back homes at three times the price they were sold for only a few years ago.

However, it is clear from our data why councils are doing this, with the largest slice of homes that are reacquired or bought off the open market being used for temporary accommodation.

Others are being reacquired to enable an estate regeneration or major works to go ahead on a block, and still more are being put back into general needs stock.

5. Some councils are now restarting sites that were put on hold due to viability concerns in the past few years

Our full story on the data goes into some detail into the approach taken by Waltham Forest, for example, which is back on track with a number of projects. This comes after it decided to wind up its company Sixty Bricks over viability issues.