A Labour Party Campaign Group has written to the recently reinstated housing secretary Angela Rayner, urging her to focus the government’s Social and Affordable Housing Programme (SAHP) on social rent council homes. Announced at the end of 2025, the £39bn SAHP was originally created to fund the development of affordable and social homes of all tenures, such as affordable rent and shared ownership.
However, since Burnham took up the mantle of PM and Rayner was reinstated, much of the Prime Ministers rhetoric has focused on the delivery of council housing specifically, with the goal of seeing council housebuilding not seen since “post-war levels”. This commitment has been met with praise by many, but also with just as much speculation as to how such a surge would be funded.
Following this speculation, the secretary of the Labour Campaign for Council Housing has written to the housing secretary, insisting that in it’s current form, SAHP would fall short of the revolutionary impact on council housebuilding the Labour party has so far talked of. The campaign pointed out that none of the funds discussed in SAHP are prioritised for council homes specifically, and councils currently have to compete with housing associations, for-profit providers and developers for funding.
READ MORE: Preparing for an Ageing Britain: New Panel Added to Future Foundations Agenda
The letter to Rayner also raised questions surrounding the funding available to councils through loans. Low-cost loans available to providers that are available at an interest rate of 0.1% aren’t available to councils, meaning their loans would be applied for through the Public Works Loans Board with significantly higher interest rates. The government previously considered private funding in order to support housebuilding, but the report was dismissive of this idea, citing it as more expensive and with a return of fewer social homes.
Indeed, even if the whole of SAHP funding is redirected towards social housing, there are some that even argue that even the £39bn figure won’t be enough to have the transformative approach Burnham is aiming for. With talk surrounding post-war levels of expansion and the most council homes built in a generation, the initiative will surely require significant resources and funding, although where these will come from remains speculation at this point.
