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Chancellor to pump extra £2.3bn into housing budgets
The chancellor will pump an extra £2.3bn into the government’s housing budgets over the next four years as part of today’s Spending Review.
Rishi Sunak unveiled a £7.1bn National Home Building Fund (NHBF) during his speech in parliament today as part of “the highest sustained level of public investment in more than 40 years”.
Spending Review documents reveal that £4.8bn of this constitutes previously announced capital grant funding “including for land remediation, infrastructure investment and land assembly”.
Another £2.2bn will be provided in new loan finance for house builders across England, including for modern methods of construction, small and medium-sized businesses and custom builders through Help to Build.
The remaining £100m will come in the form of extra cash for non-mayoral combined authorities in 2021/22 to support housebuilding and regeneration – including redeveloping estates, releasing public sector land and remediating brownfield sites.
Mayoral combined authorities were handed £400m of similar funding at last year’s Budget.
This £7.1bn is separate to the Affordable Homes Programme, worth £12.2bn between 2021 and 2026, bringing the government’s total capital housing investment to just short of £20bn.
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Overall government capital spending will total £100bn next year alone – £27bn more than last year in real terms.
Ministers hope the NHBF will help “unlock” up to 860,000 homes, with further funding promised for the next multi-year Spending Review in line with the government’s commitment to provide £10bn for housing-enabling infrastructure projects.
Budget tables show that of the £7.1bn, £2bn will be spent in 2021/22, £2.2bn in 2022/23, £2bn in 2023/24 and £900m in 2024/25.
Inside Housing has asked the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to confirm from which funds the £4.8bn for the NHBF will come.
Brian Berry, chief executive of the Federation of Master Builders, said: “I welcome the extra support from the chancellor with the announcement of the National Home Building Fund and confirmation of Help to Build.
“Extra funding is welcome, but without urgent investment in our local authority planning departments to speed up decisions, projects are struggling to get off the ground.”
