Government allocates £39bn for affordable homes amid Burnham criticism

The government has announced a £39 billion funding package to build tens of thousands of affordable homes across England, with the first wave of £9.5 billion allocated to regions outside London. The money will go to 33 strategic partners, mostly housing associations and private not-for-profit organisations, with only three councils among them. This has drawn criticism from Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, who had previously pledged that all such funding should go to local authorities to build council homes.

Speaking on the day of the announcement, the government said the funding would subsidise the construction of 73,000 new homes over the next ten years. The majority will be for social rent, the cheapest form of rented social housing, typically around half the market rate. The rest will be a mix of affordable rent at 80% of the market rate and shared ownership, where buyers purchase part of a home and pay rent on the remainder.

The first wave of money is targeted at regions including Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the northeast. Greenwich Council in southeast London is already building 450 new homes, but more than 31,000 households are on the borough's housing waiting list. Nationally, 1.3 million households are on waiting lists for social housing, and last year half of England's local authorities did not build a single council home.

Andy Burnham, who launched his campaign to become an MP with a promise that all such funding should go to councils, has been accused of backtracking. In a past statement, he said: "The money allocated in my view should all go towards that council house building program. Why? Because that delivers greater returns." The current allocation, however, sees most funding going to housing associations, not councils.

The human impact of the housing shortage was highlighted by the case of Ray Clements, who lost his sight, ended up in temporary accommodation and spent several weeks sleeping rough. After being rehoused, he said: "Since I've had me home I've been able to sort of build bridges and start to put my life back in place."

Campaigners are calling for more of the £39 billion to be brought forward and for social homes to be prioritised for people experiencing homelessness. The scale of the challenge is stark: at the peak of council house building in the 1950s, around 150,000 homes a year were built; last year, just over 10,000 were completed. Inflation has made construction more expensive, and higher interest rates have made buying more costly, adding to the difficulty of solving Britain's housing crisis.