Burnham hails council house comeback with £10bn for 70,000 new homes

Andy Burnham has announced the comeback of the council house as he unveiled a £10bn package to build 70,000 new homes in England.

Building thousands of new council houses was one of his “day one’ priorities when taking over from Sir Keir Starmer in July, when he warned that “no child should be raised in a hostel room and no family should wait 10 years for a front door of their own”.

It marks the first major spending announcement of the Burnham government – although the cash comes from a £39bn fund agreed by Sir Keir and ex-chancellor Rachel Reeves in the 2025 spending review.

It builds on the government’s commitment to deliver 1.5 million homes this parliament, including the biggest boost to council, social and affordable housing in a generation – amid concerns the target will be missed. It also comes as the prime minister has made ending rough sleeping a major priority.

The announcement will see councils across England receive the cash to build thousands of new homes with new powers to get building accelerated and make decisions in their areas.

“I have said from my first day in this job that everything starts with a good home,” said the prime minister, who has also pushed a decentralisation policy.

“Nearly £10bn 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.”

The move is meant to be the start of a reversal of the social housing crisis, which has its origins in Margaret Thatcher’s mass sell-off of council houses to occupants in the 1980s.

Failure to replace sold-off stock, along with added bureaucracy around building new homes, has left some areas with waiting lists as long as 50 years.

The announcement comes just 24 hours after Reform UK revealed their plans to build 50,000 social-housing homes a year but prioritising married people, military veterans and only making them available to people born in the UK.

Reform deputy leader Richard Tice, who was a property entrepreneur, admitted the failure to replace council housing stocks after the Thatcher sell-off had been “a mistake”.

But Tory shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly claimed that Mr Burnham’s package was “a sleight of hand” and warned that it is “yet another unfunded spending commitment”.

He said: “The small print shows homes won’t have to be delivered until 2039. And the funding has been backloaded to fall outside the Spending Review and this Parliament, meaning Andy Burnham will never have to pay for it. Instead, it'll be another cheque written by Labour PM and left for future generations to cover.