Budget 2024: Social housing must be considered vital national infrastructure

Deputy PM Angela Rayner has said she wants to ‘deliver a council house revolution’ - ((Alamy/PA))

England’s housing emergency has been long in the making. Successive governments have failed to deliver enough homes, and the situation is worsening.

Back in 2009-10, the last year a Labour government delivered a Budget, nearly 40,000 new social homes were built. Fifteen years later, in 2023-24, just 4,356 new social homes were completed and fewer than 4,000 were started.