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Homes England affordable home starts up 42%
The number of new affordable homes started funded by Homes England increased by more than 42% for the first half of the financial year, new figures have revealed.
A total of 9,909 homes were started on sites led by the government’s housing delivery agency for the six months up to 30 September 2018, up from 6,989 homes for the same period last year.
More than half of these starts (5,714) were for affordable rent properties, up 26% on last year’s 4,526 figure.
Intermediate schemes such as shared ownership and Rent to Buy accounted for 3,702 properties a rise of 71% on the 2,169 started last year.
Social rent accounted for only 493 of the affordable homes built across the period. This marked a 63% rise on last year’s figure of 294 starts, but still accounts for only just under 5% of all affordable Homes England home starts.
A total of 307 social rent homes were completed across the time period.
These figures are just for homes funded through Homes England grant and so do not include homes funded by the Greater London Authority or built through Section 106.
Labour’s shadow housing secretary John Healey criticised the figures, saying it was “shameful” that the government had funded so few social rent homes, when over a million households were on council waiting lists.
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Earlier this week, housing minister Kit Malthouse said the current proportion of home starts for the social rent market – just under 3% – was not enough.
The total number of homes started under schemes managed by Homes England was 15,766 across the six-month period, up from 13,685 for the same period last year.
Housing starts for market sale accounted for 5,857 homes, 37% of all starts on Homes England programmes.
Homes England was formed in January this year as a successor to the Homes and Communities Agency.
Last month it released its five-year strategic plan which set a target to deliver 130,000 homes by March 2023, including at least 12,5000 social rent homes.
Total housing completions, excluding Help to Buy, rose by nearly a third, with the number of homes completed rising from 12,030 last year to 15,704 this year.
A total of 7,219 completions were for affordable rent properties and 2,841 were for intermediate schemes.
Nick Walkley, chief executive of Homes England, said: “These latest figures show the overall number of homes being built continues to rise, reflecting the hard work being carried out by the housing industry to build better homes faster.
“However, while they are encouraging to see, we cannot be complacent.
“We know there is more work to be done to meet the government’s ambition to deliver 300,000 new homes a year, so we will continue to intervene in the housing market and use our land, powers and influence to make homes happen.”
