Britain has a housing problem that has been allowed to build for decades.
Too few homes are being built. Social housing supply has failed to keep pace with need. Councils face enormous pressures, families remain on waiting lists, temporary accommodation costs taxpayers billions, and many younger people increasingly believe that a secure home is beyond their reach.
Manifesto 1.0 proposes an ambitious response.
This is deliberately ambitious.
It will require substantial investment, long-term political commitment and major improvements to the way Britain plans, finances and delivers housing.
Manifesto 1.0 does not pretend otherwise.
| Measure | Proposed approach |
|---|---|
| Total programme | 1,000,000 new social homes |
| Delivery period | 10 years |
| Average annual target | 100,000 homes per year |
| Primary delivery bodies | Local authorities and regulated housing associations |
| Core financing mechanism | Long-term, low-interest capital finance alongside grants and other investment |
| Additional capital | Private-sector investment and matched eligible charitable contributions |
| Wider reform | Planning reform, land availability, infrastructure and private housebuilding incentives |
Announcing that Britain should build a million homes is easy.
Actually creating the financial, legal, planning and construction environment capable of delivering them is much harder.
The purpose of this proposal is therefore not simply to set a headline number.
That means addressing:
The million-home programme should therefore form one part of a wider housing strategy rather than operate in isolation.
Local authorities and housing associations cannot deliver a programme of this scale if they are expected to finance every development through short-term or prohibitively expensive borrowing.
Manifesto 1.0 therefore proposes a dedicated long-term social housing finance framework.
Government would make long-duration, low-interest capital finance available to eligible local authorities and regulated housing associations for approved social housing development.
Loans could be structured over long repayment periods appropriate to housing infrastructure and supported by predictable rental income from completed homes.
The precise interest rate, maturity and subsidy arrangements would need to reflect government borrowing costs, fiscal conditions and project risk.
The principle, however, is straightforward: public bodies building assets that may serve communities for generations should have access to financing designed around the life of those assets.
The programme would operate within a statutory funding framework rather than through unrestricted transfers of public money.
Eligible schemes would need to satisfy defined requirements before receiving government-backed finance.
These should include:
Finance should be released in stages against agreed development milestones where appropriate.
This protects taxpayers while giving councils and housing associations the certainty required to plan substantial long-term development programmes.
Delivery should not depend upon one central government department attempting to build one million homes itself.
Britain already has institutions with housing expertise, local knowledge, land holdings and development experience.
The programme would therefore work principally through:
Local delivery allows housing programmes to reflect different regional needs rather than imposing precisely the same development model everywhere.
Long-term loans ultimately expose the public balance sheet to risk.
That means the programme must have proper controls.
A national financing framework should establish:
Government finance should not be the only source of capital.
Manifesto 1.0 would seek to crowd additional investment into the housing programme where that investment is compatible with long-term affordability and public value.
Potential sources could include:
Private capital should supplement the public programme rather than determine its social purpose.
Contracts and partnerships must protect affordability, housing standards and taxpayer value.
Britain has charities, foundations and philanthropic organisations already working on homelessness, supported housing and community development.
Where eligible charitable organisations contribute funding directly towards approved social housing projects, government should be able to provide matched funding within defined limits.
Such arrangements would require clear eligibility and anti-abuse rules.
Matching should therefore be targeted, capped and conditional upon projects meeting the same standards expected elsewhere in the programme.
A million homes should not mean a million identical properties.
Different communities require different types of housing.
The programme should support an appropriate mix including:
Local need should help determine the mix.
Housing cannot be planned independently of the infrastructure required to support it.
Major developments may require additional:
Finance alone will not solve Britain's housing shortage.
A government could make billions of pounds available for housebuilding and still fail if viable developments remain trapped indefinitely within a dysfunctional planning system.
That is why this proposal should be read alongside the forthcoming Manifesto 1.0 proposal on Planning Reform.
Manifesto 1.0 proposes a national housing and infrastructure test and stronger central intervention where necessary.
The detailed planning reforms belong in that proposal rather than being duplicated here.
But the connection is fundamental.
One million additional social homes should not replace private housebuilding.
Britain needs both.
A separate Manifesto 1.0 proposal will examine Private Housebuilding Incentives designed to make building additional homes more financially attractive.
The objective is a broader revival of housing supply across different tenures.
Social housebuilding can provide stability and additional capacity while private-sector reform increases overall construction.
There is another unavoidable constraint: somebody has to build these homes.
A sustained increase in construction will require sufficient:
The programme should therefore be coordinated with apprenticeships, technical education, workforce planning and modern methods of construction.
A ten-year programme provides an advantage here.
This is an expensive proposal.
Manifesto 1.0 should say that plainly.
The Budget 3.0 framework provides an indicative mature annual programme envelope of approximately:
That figure represents a programme-level fiscal envelope rather than an assumption that government directly pays the entire construction cost of every home.
The eventual fiscal treatment would depend upon the balance between:
The gross value of construction generated by the programme could therefore be considerably larger than the annual direct expenditure scored against government budgets.
One million homes cannot responsibly be costed from a single average cost-per-property figure.
Land prices, construction costs, infrastructure requirements, dwelling size and regional conditions vary enormously.
The £20–£25 billion annual envelope should therefore be treated as a working programme allocation requiring detailed Treasury, housing-sector and local-government modelling.
Manifesto 1.0 does not claim that the final financing structure has already been solved.
The commitment is to establish a credible framework capable of turning an ambitious national target into deliverable local projects.
The cost of building social housing should not be considered without examining the cost of failing to build it.
Housing shortages create costs elsewhere.
Government and councils already spend substantial sums dealing with:
Unlike many forms of government expenditure, housebuilding also creates a physical asset with a potentially very long useful life.
That does not make the investment free.
It does mean the debate should consider both sides of the ledger.
A programme of this scale would also have wider economic consequences.
Potential benefits include:
But there are risks too.
If construction capacity does not increase alongside spending, additional demand could simply push up land, labour and material prices.
That is another reason why the programme must be phased over ten years rather than attempted overnight.
Success should not be measured solely by money announced.
Government should publish regular programme data including:
Britain's housing shortage was not created in one year and it will not be solved in one year.
But that is not an argument for continuing with inadequate ambition.
A ten-year programme provides time to expand construction capacity, train workers, reform planning, assemble land, develop infrastructure and create a stable investment pipeline.
The scale is substantial because the problem is substantial.
The figure should be tested.
The financing should be challenged.
The delivery model should be scrutinised.
And if better mechanisms can achieve the objective more efficiently, Manifesto 1.0 should adopt them.
Can Britain build one million additional social homes over ten years by giving councils and housing associations access to patient, affordable finance — while reforming the wider system that has allowed housebuilding to stagnate?
This is one of the largest investment commitments in Manifesto 1.0.
It deserves scrutiny proportionate to its scale.
Let's test it.
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Manifesto 1.0 — A New Settlement for Britain