The stats are stark: families on Bath and North East Somerset council’s social housing list face a 200-year wait for a four-bedroom property and the latest available figures show England is building just a little over 10,000 social homes a year.
Tackling this crisis was a key element of Labour’s election promise to build 1.5m homes over five years, with the government in July announcing plans to spend £39bn building 300,000 affordable homes over a decade, 60% of them for social rent.
