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The Week in Housing: banking on Homes England

Insight20.06.252.50 PM by Stephen Delahunty

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The Week in Housing: banking on Homes England #UKhousing

A weekly round-up of the most important headlines for housing professionals #UKhousing

Good afternoon.

To top off last week’s Spending Review, the government confirmed that the new £39bn Affordable Homes Programme (AHP) will prioritise social housing, with details on grant rates to follow “shortly”.

At the same time, Homes England, the government’s housing and regeneration agency, will get its own bank to drive £16bn of new investment into the delivery of 500,000 homes. It is hoped that the bank will accelerate housebuilding, and leverage in £53bn of additional private investment.

With the sector’s coffers swelling handsomely, research by JLL found that the AHP could deliver as many as 500,000 homes in the next decade, but it will need roughly another £100bn in private finance to plug a viability gap.

The consultancy used previous grant-funding models, split between social and affordable rent and shared ownership, to reach the 50,000 homes per annum estimate. However, it said this would be “at a stretch”.

With all of this new money sloshing around the sector, Inside Housing has expanded into new sub-sectors of housing. James Riding, living markets editor, explains why here.

As part of this expansion, we caught up with Britain’s largest asset manager, Legal & General, to discuss the rapid rise of single-family investment – and how it is trying to become a better landlord.

Inside Housing and Inside Housing Management also launched a new campaign – Housing Management Matters – to spotlight the vital work of resident-facing staff. Anna Highfield set out the campaign’s aims on Wednesday.

The launch came with a survey revealing what social housing staff think makes their jobs meaningful.

Obviously feeling flush, Homes England acquired Ripon Barracks from the Ministry of Defence, to pave the way for 1,300 new homes on the site that was scheduled for closure. It’s the first deal to be announced since the government committed to spending an extra £1.5bn on improving the state of housing for the UK’s armed forces and building more homes.

Peter Denton, former chief executive of Homes England, was one of several sector leaders to receive an award as part of the 2025 King’s Birthday Honours.

Elsewhere, the Housing Ombudsman’s latest report highlighted 12 landlords for failing to properly handle repairs for leaseholders, including delaying fixing problems and wrongly claiming repairs were not their responsibility. The watchdog said the causes of the failings were “not isolated”, but part of a “repeated pattern” that could have been prevented if landlords learned lessons from complaints.

Birmingham City Council launched a longer-term leasing scheme for temporary accommodation in a bid to reduce the cost pressures associated with subsidy rules. The 10-year-plus-one-day scheme aims to lease private sector homes the council uses for temporary accommodation for more than 10 years, which legally allows it to account for the costs in its Housing Revenue Account instead of its general fund. The council believes this could help it avoid the £7m gap it covers per year as a result of the temporary accommodation subsidy rules.

This idea came ahead of the government announcing an extension to the call for evidence for the first UK-wide investigation into what life in temporary accommodation is like for families with neurodivergent children.

Whitehall also confirmed that care leavers under 25 and victims of domestic abuse will be exempt from local-connection rules that restrict access to social housing.

Residents of an eight-block development in London claimed they had been “undermined” by their local council in a long-running battle to make their buildings safe. The privately owned Royal Artillery Quays in Woolwich has been at the centre of a six-year campaign to get fire safety issues fixed.

The development had been signed off by the Building Safety regulator, which is the focus of a short inquiry on reports of delays to approvals for new high rises and maintenance of existing buildings.

A new report by the London Assembly’s housing committee urged mayor Sir Sadiq Khan to commit to capping service charges for new shared ownership homes and work to improve transparency in charges across the capital.

In Northern Ireland, the number of homelessness presentations has decreased by 10% compared with the same period last year.

In Wales, a local government pension scheme and an investment manager have launched a £51m local impact fund to develop social housing, infrastructure and social care. Plus, ClwydAlyn retained its A credit rating with a stable outlook from S&P.

Finally, a tragic case caused a coroner to raise concerns with the government, a council and a housing association, after a man whose flat was “cuckooed” by criminal gangs took his own life.

Have a good weekend.

Stephen Delahunty, news editor, Inside Housing