Andy Burnham is set to hand London almost 40 per cent of the initial round of Britain’s council housing funding under his plans for a “comeback” of new social homes.
The Prime Minister is expected to announce £10billion in funding to build 70,000 new social and affordable homes outside the capital.
Mayors in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, North East, West Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region and South Yorkshire are expected to see £2.5billion spent in their areas to deliver roughly 20,300 new properties.
The Government has said the decision to directly hand funding to mayors for future project shows its “commitment to move power and decision-making out of Whitehall”.
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But at the same time, ministers will hand around £6billion through the “council housing comeback” scheme to the Greater London Authority (GLA).
That means that of a total £16billion spend, London will be in store for 37 per cent of the cash.
As of 2024/25, there were just over 717,000 social rented homes in London – a fifth of the capital’s total stock.
The year before, nearly 350,000 households were on a Social Housing Register or waiting list for a council home in the capital.
But census data reveals that nearly half of the heads of households in London are migrants.
In 2021 – before the brunt of the “Boriswave” arrived in Britain – some 47.6 per cent of social housing in London had a head of household born abroad.
In some London boroughs, more than three-quarters of social housing is occupied by residents not born in the UK.
Across England and Wales as a whole, nearly a fifth of social housing is occupied by those born overseas.
Both the Conservatives and Reform UK have unveiled plans in recent weeks to return Britain’s social housing stock to Britons.
Kemi Badenoch has vowed to remove foreign nationals from council houses in order to stop Britain being a “cash machine for the world”.
Her plan would take nearly 230,000 non-EU foreign national households out of council homes to open them up for British families.
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Reform UK unveiled its own plans to evict foreign nationals from social housing across the country yesterday – though have made similar pledges even before Mrs Badenoch’s plans were revealed.
On Monday the party’s deputy leader Richard Tice, set out the pledge to overhaul the UK’s social housing system by prioritising British-born citizens over foreigners, echoing Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy from the 80s.
Reform pledged to oust migrants from social housing within three months of Nigel Farage entering No10 which would free up as many as 540,000 homes.
British-born workers under the age of 35 will be “placed at the front of the queue”, including married couples with children.
Priority would also be given to veterans, and social housing will be prioritised for British nationals who are in work so that it does not continue being a “reward for welfare”.
Labour’s plans, first unveiled by Sir Keir Starmer, see £39billion being spent on social housing in a bid to build 300,000 new homes by 2036.
The £16billion figure today is the first round of funding of that £39billion plan.
Sixty per cent of those 300,000 homes have been earmarked to be social housing, where tenants pay the lowest rent.
A further 40 per cent of homes will be classed as “affordable rent”, in which tenants pay up to 80 per cent of the market rate.
Announcing the plans, Mr Burnham said: “No child should be raised in a hostel room and no family should wait 10 years for a front door of their own. I have said from my first day in this job that everything starts with a good home.
“Nearly £10billion will go to councils and housing associations to build genuinely affordable homes, most of them for social rent, in the places where families are waiting longest.
“Councils built this country out of a housing crisis once before. Backed properly, and trusted to get on with it, they will do it again.”
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