UK social housing crisis worsens

Construction problems, soaring repair bills, and a lack of financial resources have all been identified as contributory factors to a social housing crisis in England, which has resulted in more than 1 million families and individuals waiting for somewhere to live, and only a trickle of new properties being built.

Social housing is accommodation provided by non-profit organizations or government agencies for people on low incomes, or with specific needs.

A report by the BBC said that for the supply problem to be solved, around 90,000 such properties need to be built every year for the next 10 years, but in the last 12 months, less than 5,000 were constructed.

One of the reasons for the bottleneck of supply is that many social housing providers currently have limited purchasing power because of pressing issues relating to properties they already own.

A fire caused by an electrical fault at the Grenfell Tower block in West London in 2017 left 72 people dead, in Britain's biggest fire fatality since World War II.

One of the contributory factors was found to be flammable cladding that had been added to the building in renovations during the previous year.

According to a Freedom of Information request made to the government by property website The Developer in the summer of 2024, although remedial work has begun on hundreds of taller buildings affected, there are still 90 residential medium-rise buildings covered in some of the most dangerous similar materials, with the National Housing Federation saying that the total repair bill for this could be as much as 6 billion pounds ($7.8 billion).

Another safety issue that has had a huge impact on the sector is Awaab's Law, which requires social housing landlords to work to time constraints in addressing dangerous hazards, such as damp and mold in properties, after this was found to be a contributory factor in the death of 2-year-old Awaab Ishak, who lived in social housing and died from respiratory problems caused by damp.

Steve Turner, executive director of trade group the Home Builders Federation, told the BBC its members are ready to build thousands more properties now, but cannot find takers.

"It is a major and growing problem that is increasingly threatening affordable and overall housing supply," he explained. "Small sites are being prevented from starting and larger sites are being halted as a result."

The new government has promised to "get Britain building again "by reforming planning regulations and freeing up more land for building, a move that will include social, as well as private, housing.

Housing charity Shelter said social housing needs to lead the way in the hoped-for housing revolution.

"Any new planning legislation must be focused on delivering 90,000 social rent homes a year," it said. "Private developers will not deliver the target 1.5 million homes by themselves — councils need the means to build genuinely affordable homes too."