More than 1.3 million households are trapped on social housing waiting lists in England, yet last year just over 12,000 new social homes were built. At the current rate, Shelter warns it would take 119 years to clear the backlog — a lifetime of uncertainty for families living in temporary accommodation, cars, or overcrowded rooms.
The construction workers are ready. The skills are there. What Britain lacks is the political courage to fund and unlock the homes we desperately need.
Shelter has long argued that England requires at least 90,000 new social rent homes a year for a decade to end this emergency. That figure isn’t plucked from thin air — it’s the scale needed to house those in greatest need and start reversing record homelessness.
Yet building at that pace demands serious money. One answer lies in smarter land management. When farmland is granted planning permission, its value can soar twenty or thirty-fold overnight. That windfall currently flows into private pockets. A fairer system of land value capture — taxing or recapturing some of that uplift — could channel billions into public housebuilding without punishing ordinary homeowners.
Then there are the sacred cows. The Green Belt, originally meant to stop urban sprawl, now blocks sensible development on low-quality “grey belt” land around towns and cities. Meanwhile, NIMBYs — Not In My Back Yard campaigners — fight tooth and nail against new homes in their area, preserving their views and property prices while young families and the homeless pay the price.
The planning system itself is sclerotic, bogged down in delays and appeals that favour objectors over those who need roofs over their heads. We are not doing enough. Not nearly enough.
Britain doesn’t have a shortage of bricklayers or cranes. It has a shortage of will. Reforming council tax valuations, capturing land value gains, relaxing the most restrictive Green Belt rules, and overhauling planning could unlock the homes we need.
The question is no longer whether we can afford to build. The question is whether we can afford not to.
