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Next Affordable Homes Programme will be ‘even larger’ than before, confirms Jenrick
Housing secretary Robert Jenrick has told parliament that the next grant programme for affordable housing will be “even larger” than the current one.
Answering a question in the House of Commons today, Mr Jenrick repeated the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitment to renew the Affordable Homes Programme and said the new programme will be “at least as generous” as the current one.
The existing £9bn Affordable Homes Programme, which provides funding to housing associations and local authorities to develop affordable housing, was launched in 2016 and is due to end in 2021.
Speaking alongside other ministers from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Mr Jenrick said: “We have already invested £9bn through our affordable housing programme and we’ve made a manifesto commitment to bring forward another one which is even larger.”
He added that the government “wants to build more homes of all types”.
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He said the government will also spend more on infrastructure and introduce reforms to the planning system, the latter of which will be done via the introduction of a Planning White Paper later this year.
When asked about the recent increase in Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) borrowing rates for councils, Mr Jenrick said “the interest rate remains very favourable, returning only to 2018 levels”.
In October last year, Inside Housing reported that the councils may have to cancel housing projects after the cost of borrowing from the PWLB rose by 1% without warning.
Mr Jenrick was also asked whether he was planning to extend the government’s cladding fund, which allows leaseholders living in blocks with aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding to reclaim remediation costs, to those with high-pressure laminate (HPL) cladding.
The housing secretary said the government “has to be guided by the evidence” and will publish the results of its HPL cladding test shortly.
Tests of non-ACM cladding systems, including HPL, began in spring last year, despite several bodies calling for tests in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell fire. Last year, the government said that it expected the final result of the tests to be available by the summer.
