Chancellor Rachel Reeves is due to double the funding period for affordable housing from the usual five years in a move that industry insiders said would provide much needed stability to the sector.
The 10-year guarantee comes as Reeves commits to spending billions of pounds in capital expenditure to boost housing, transport and energy infrastructure.
Government insiders insisted that they did not recognise the £25bn figure, but confirmed a 10-year settlement was due to be announced by the Chancellor as part of her spending review.
“The concept of a 10 year cycle is a good thing,” one housing source told The i Paper. “If you constantly have funding cycles of five years, then your delivery slows down because housing associations and councils can’t plan for the future. They can’t buy land, they can’t hire staff, and they can’t start allocating sites, because it takes quite a while to build in advance, because they are worried that the money will stop.”
Rayner, who is both Housing Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister, has previously spoken about how boosting the levels of affordable housing is a personal priority for her, pledging in July that she would oversee “the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in generations”.
Speaking at the Social Housing Annual Conference in November, she described the Government’s mission to drive more social housing was a “personal mission of mine too”.
Funding warning – and more trains
But campaign groups have warned that if the money allocated for affordable homes is anything close to £2.5bn a year over 10 years, then the Government will have failed in its promise to deliver a “council house revolution”.
“However, a long-term affordable homes programme means little without having enough funding to start the delivery of the 90,000 social homes we need a year to tackle the housing crisis and solve homelessness.”
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Further details on a new Liverpool to Manchester rail link, along with a commitment to provide funding for the Transpennine Rail Upgrade from Manchester to Leeds due to be announced in the following days, The i Paper has been told.
It comes after Reeves has also already announced some £15.6 billion of spending on public transport in England’s city regions, and £16.7 billion for nuclear power projects, the bulk of which will fund the new Sizewell C plant in Suffolk.
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