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How to increase housing supply: Use every tool in the box

Norwich city by pam fray, CC BY-SA 2.0

Britain needs more homes. We should use policy to get empty homes back into use and to encourage people with extra space to downsize – but that won’t change the fact that the UK has been under-delivering homes for decades compared to other Western countries.

Yet our housing crisis is not just a crisis of low supply. It is a crisis of overdependence on a single model of supply. For decades, we have relied overwhelmingly on speculative private development. Developers buy land assuming they will build market sale homes for the highest prices possible in a given local market. They then wait as long as necessary to sell at the prices they assumed when buying land. When prices fall or build costs increase, as they have done recently, supply slows. That is not a moral failing: it is how the speculative development model is designed to work.

The planning system bakes in this housing model, taking for granted that this is how the majority of homes will be delivered, and seeking to cream off some of its profits to build social housing and infrastructure (via Section 106 agreements in England and Wales, and Section 75 agreements in Scotland). No resilient country should rely so heavily on one delivery model for something as fundamental as housing.

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There are two basic theories at play in the debate about how to increase housing supply in the UK:

  1. Make this speculative development model as easy, smooth and profitable as possible
  2. Diversify the UK’s housing supply away from this one over-dominant model of housing supply

I would argue it is self-evident that the gains from the first strategy are bound to be too limited to make a difference to most people’s lives. Reforms to planning and regulation matter. Britain does need a faster, more predictable planning system. But planning reform alone cannot solve a housing crisis rooted in overdependence on a single speculative delivery model that relies on maintaining prices where they are. Since current prices are far too high for most people to afford, this supply model will only ever be able to cater to a minority. Increasingly, it sells homes to first time buyers with support from the so-called ‘Bank of mum and dad’. For the rest of us, our only possible hope of buying an average priced home in England is to be in the top 10% of earners in the country.

Now let’s explore the second strategy: free the UK from over-dependence on the speculative model. Healthy housing systems use many delivery models at once: private sale, social housing, community-led housing, Build to Rent, co-operatives and specialist housing for older people.

The most direct way to diversify how we build homes is to use the tried and tested model of mass social housebuilding – as discussed in Labour Housing Group’s 2020 report, The Missing Solution. Policy and funding support must enable councils and housing associations to ramp up supply. To scale up social housebuilding anywhere close to the levels needed, we need two things.

  1. Sources of land protected from speculative housebuilding. If social landlords are competing with speculative housebuilders for the same land, they will either lose or buy land at an extortionate and unsustainable price.
  2. Public grant and affordable finance to cover the costs of building homes, so that rents can be kept low and affordable for social renters and homes can be managed and maintained to decent, safe standards.

It is a moral and economic imperative for governments across the UK to scale up this model as much as humanly possible, as fast as humanly possible. We can and must do more – for example on affordable land supply, front-loading grant, extending low-cost loans, building capacity in councils and community-led housing groups, and supporting acquisitions from the market.

But after 14 years of Conservative misrule of our economy, aggravated by war and international turmoil, it is difficult to see how the UK can scale up social housebuilding as quickly as we need to confront our housing crisis in the way that people deserve. It is going to take time to rebuild social housebuilding after decades of hostile policies.

I don’t want to ask people to wait. I want us to use every tool in the box to get every person in this country in a safe, affordable, decent place to call home. That means using policy to support as much diversification of housing supply as possible:

None of these alternative private development models alone will solve the housing crisis – but done right, they can all help. All have untapped potential to provide more ‘Affordable Housing’ through planning agreements.

I understand why many on the Left are sceptical of new profit-driven development models. But there is no doubt they are playing an important role in diversifying housing supply in other countries with similar housing problems to our own. Britain’s housing crisis is too deep, and too urgent, for ideological purity or single-solution thinking.

We must build far more social housing. We should reform planning. We should support community-led housing. We should use Build to Rent, specialist housing and student housing where they help free up supply elsewhere.

The goal is not to defend one development model against another. The goal is to create space in our housebuilding system for every model that can contribute to ending the housing crisis.

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Lessons from our history: Britain must build places, not units

There is a growing consensus that something has fundamentally gone wrong at all levels with housing in Britain.  We often search for new approaches and policies to meet society’s needs when in fact we should instead look at our history for the solutions.

The Labour Government understands that the housing market is dysfunctional, that housing supply for decades has been inadequate and is rightly appalled at inheriting a situation where there are over 300,000 people, including more than 170,000 children, in all forms of temporary accommodation.  In this context, the response to set an ambitious target of 1.5 million new homes over 5 years is appropriate.  I am, however, concerned that even with a record £39 billion committed to the affordable housing programme, this will not produce anywhere near enough truly affordable homes, and in particular, the right kind of social rent homes to meet the crushing levels of housing need.

My worry is that in a drive to hit house building targets we lose sight of something of enormous importance, and that is the need to create communities where people want to live and want to put down roots.

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This is where looking at our history becomes so important. During the inter-war years of the early twentieth century, and then in the post second world war period, pioneering planners and local authorities in Britain, despite the most challenging of circumstances, created garden cities and new towns that have stood the test of time.

The Dagenham and Rainham constituency that I represent contains much of the Becontree housing estate started in the 1920s. The planners of the London County Council had the foresight to adopt much of the thinking that inspired the earlier garden city movement. Building 2, 3 and 4 bedroom houses with gardens, in an area where parks and other green public spaces were created, gave life changing conditions for families moving from slum tenement blocks in east London.  

The housing supply of the last decade or two has been driven, predominately, by the targeting of numbers and by building viability arguments from developers. This has resulted in the over-supply of 1-bedroom flats and a nearly complete absence of 4-bedroom properties.

Instead, we must treat building as a part of place making. We must consider nurturing sustainable communities which are more balanced, incorporating the essential social and transport infrastructure needed to support new and existing communities.

That would also mean changing the housing mix in terms of tenure and house sizes and to build sufficient numbers of homes suitable for families. It would mean building specific accommodation for elderly people designed to promote and extend independent living. This would in fact save revenue spending on social care and demands on health services.

I strongly suspect that this model of housing development would not just have greater longevity than the high-rise apartment block estates do, but would engender much higher levels of wellbeing, with all of the positive social and health outcome benefits that flow from it.

It would also not surprise me if this approach reduces opposition from existing communities to new housing schemes.  This would also save planning expenses and time, and give a greater feeling of ownership and of being done by, rather than done to.

As a nation we did this before and did so in even more financially challenging times. Not only that, but those places and homes have stood the test of time.

Building for the future means planning neighbourhoods around the flow of life. From having the infrastructure to provide the best start in life, affordable first homes, places to work and socialise, family sized homes for social rent where people can put down roots, to sheltered options where people can grow old in the community they call home.

Only a legacy plan will help us surmount the housing crisis, not a dash for units.

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Blog Post Renters' Rights Act

Enforcement will define the Renters’ Rights Act’s success

Since being elected, one of my priorities has been to tackle the insecurity faced by private renters across the country and within the Cities of London and Westminster. In my constituency, thousands rely on the private rented sector, and for too many, the reality has meant unstable tenancies, unpredictable rent increases, and a system that too often leaves tenants with little power over the place they call home.  

Long before I was elected, I met with renters who shared their experiences, families forced to move at short notice, tenants hesitant to challenge unfair treatment, and individuals living with the constant fear that a rent increase could push them out of their community. Those conversations made one thing clear: insecurity in the rental market does not just affect individuals, it shapes the stability and cohesion of entire neighbourhoods.

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Since entering Parliament, I have continued to work closely with residents, using their experiences to shape my work and pressing for reforms that would deliver genuine security. Shortly after being elected, I was happy to join the Committee that scrutinised the Bill going through Parliament. By banning Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions and introducing clearer protections around rent increases and tenant rights, it begins to rebalance a system that has for too long favoured landlords over renters. 

But passing legislation is only the first step. For reforms to have impact, they must be backed by systems that are accessible, fair, and effective in practice. One of the most important of these is the process through which renters can challenge rent increases.

For many tenants, the idea of formally challenging a rent increase has felt out of reach. It can appear complex, uncertain, and, above all, risky. When your home is on the line, few feel able to question a landlord’s decision, even when it seems unreasonable. That imbalance has allowed rent increases to become, in some cases, a tool of pressure. 

The changes introduced alongside the Act recognise this reality. By reducing the risks associated with challenging rent increases, they aim to give renters the confidence to assert their rights without fear of unintended consequences. This is essential if we are serious about ending the culture of insecurity that has defined renting for too long.

However, if barriers, whether financial, procedural, or practical, discourage renters from using these protections, then the system will fall short of its potential. Even modest upfront costs or the fear of retrospective charges can be enough to deter people from coming forward, particularly at a time when household budgets are already under strain.

At its heart, this is about more than dispute resolution. It is about ensuring that rent increases are fair, transparent. If renters are to feel truly secure, they must have confidence not only in the law, but in the mechanisms that enforce it. Of course, these reforms to the process of the tribunal must work side by side with investment in the tribunal process so that there are not delays.

This is more than a technical reform. It is a statement about the kind of housing system we believe in. One where renters are able to act on their rights. Where stability is the norm, not the exception. And where the ability to remain in your home does not depend on your willingness to accept whatever terms are put before you.

The Renters’ Rights Act is a landmark achievement, and one that will make a real difference to people’s lives. Its success will ultimately be measured by how it works in practice, by whether renters feel empowered to use the rights it provides, and whether those rights deliver the security they have long been denied.

For renters across the Cities of London and Westminster, and across the country, this is a moment of real progress.

For more information on what the Renters’ Rights Act means for you, please check out Shelter’s website which offers an explainer on this topic.

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Renters’ Rights Act lays the foundations of housing justice for private renters

On 26th October 2022, I received a Section 21 ‘no fault’ eviction notice. That meant my partner and I had two months to find a new flat. Three unsuccessful offers, six weeks, a lot of stress and a 40% increase in our monthly costs later, we managed to move into a new place in the same neighbourhood in time for Christmas. It was a grim, expensive experience.

Frankly though, my partner and I could take it. We had some savings, jobs flexible enough to allow us to go to flat viewings at little notice, and enough income to swallow the bitter pill of rapidly escalating rents.

Most private renters are less able to absorb this shock than we were. Almost half have no savings. The private rented sector (PRS) is now home to 1 in 4 of households with children in England, up from 1 in 10 in 2003/04. By 2040, over 2 million pensioners are projected to be renting from a private landlord. Many private renters can’t drop everything to hunt for a new flat because of work, caring responsibilities and health problems. Those with children in school or nursery have less choice over where they can move without disrupting their families. Many people simply want to stay in the community they know and where they feel at home. The need to stabilise life in the PRS is clear and urgent.

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The Renters’ Rights Act 2025 is the biggest win for renters in a generation. It is a reset after decades in which England built one of the least regulated private rented sectors in Western Europe. As of 1st May 2026, Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions are gone. That will curtail opportunities for rogue landlords to use ‘revenge evictions’, where renters who ask for repairs or complain about poor conditions are simply turfed out. Landlords will need to give a reason before evicting people – for example because they are selling the property or moving into it themselves. In these cases, renters will now get four months rather than two to find a new place to live. Given intense pressures in many local housing markets and a social housing system stretched to breaking point, having to move will continue to be a struggle. But those extra two months will be a lifeline for many. They will give renters more time, more choice, and more power.

Other changes will also help rebalance the scales in renters’ favour. Landlords will only be able to put up rent once a year, cannot demand large upfront payments, and cannot invite or accept bids above the asking rent, to name only a few. The Act is a reset after decades of unusually aggressive deregulation. The Housing Act 1988 made short-term tenancies and ‘no fault’ evictions the norm, helping create one of Western Europe’s least secure private rental markets.

But the single biggest problem for private renters remains: it is really, really expensive. Under new rules coming into force on Friday, renters will have a legal route to challenge rent hikes above market rates. Since the biggest rent increases happen when renters move between tenancies, fewer moves should also provide some protection. But none of this helps with the reality that market rates themselves are already unaffordable for many. Britain still needs far more homes, including social housing. But even a major housebuilding push would take years to ease rental pressures. Millions of renters need relief now – not in a decade or more’s time.

It’s no surprise that think tanks, charities, campaigners and tenants’ unions are now calling for different forms of rent regulation to cool or reduce rents over shorter timescales. These range from caps on how rents can rise within tenancies, to full rent freezes between tenancies, to measures to reduce rents from current highs by linking them to reference rents based on local incomes and housing conditions. Others continue the long-running campaign to increase Local Housing Allowance (housing benefit for the PRS) so that it covers the costs of renting. We need a plan to make life affordable for renters, and I hope that Red Brick can be a space for the left to share different ideas and evidence.

But we shouldn’t let this debate distract from what a huge achievement the Renters’ Rights Act is. It lays the foundations of housing justice for private renters. It will allow us to plan our lives, address problems in our homes without fear of eviction, and is likely to mean fewer moves and fewer rent hikes. That is a good place from which to plan our next steps.

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Finally, a new era for private renters is here

For some people, 1st May 2026 will not represent anything out of the ordinary beyond maybe being happy at the early signs of summer and looking forward to the coming bank holidays. But for private renters in England (one in five of the population), it will represent a new era, with the Government’s Renters’ Rights Act promising the biggest shake up to renters’ rights since the 1988 Housing Act.

The new law is a long time in the making. Generation Rent was formed back in 2014 with the aim of campaigning for change to our broken renting system. This led to Theresa May’s government first promising to scrap Section 21 evictions in 2019. Since then we’ve had a pandemic and the Conservative Government’s Renters’ Reform Bill, which fell when Rishi Sunak called a snap election two years ago.

But finally we are here. While not the answer to all our problems, the Renter’s Rights Act is certainly a vital first step in addressing the power imbalance between renters and landlords which has caused so much hardship and misery in recent years.

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The headline change is the scrapping of Section 21 evictions, which allow a landlord to evict a tenant for no reason with just two months’ notice. According to analysis by Shelter, someone approaches a local council as homeless every 21 minutes due to Section 21. Meanwhile, the looming threat of a retaliatory eviction means we renters are terrified of raising disrepair issues or challenging unfair rent increases.

From 1st May, outside of rent arrears and anti-social behaviour, landlords will only be able to evict tenants to sell the home, or move themselves or a family member in. They will need to give the renter four months’ notice in these cases and, to prevent abuse, they will be banned from re-letting the home for 12 months afterwards, meaning renters in England will enjoy better protections against eviction than in Scotland or Wales.

Alongside this, there are a host of other changes that will benefit renters from 1st May. The end of fixed-term tenancies will give us more flexibility, allowing us to vote with our feet if a home is poor quality or a landlord doesn’t fulfil their obligations. Meanwhile the limit on rent in advance to one month will help reduce the huge upfront cost of renting and the end of bidding wars will stop the practice of pitting renters against each other to drive up prices. We will also have the right to request a pet and have more incentives to challenge rent increases.

However, fairer winds for renters are not necessarily guaranteed. For the new law to reach into people’s homes and improve their lives, it must be properly enforced by local councils, while renters need to educate themselves about their new rights.

A recent investigation by The Guardian found that two-thirds of councils in England have not prosecuted a single landlord in the past three years, despite receiving 300,000 complaints from tenants during that time. Meanwhile, half of local authorities responsible for housing didn’t fine a landlord between 2022 and 2024, with fewer than 2% of renter complaints leading to any formal enforcement action.

This has to change. We were pleased that the Government recently announced additional funding for council enforcement of the Renters’ Rights Act, and will be working hard to make sure councils are using their new powers to make sure landlords abide by the new law.

But this legislation is finally a recognition that renting from a private landlord has changed dramatically since 1988. No longer do people just rent for a few years in their early 20s. The increase in house prices and loss of social housing will mean more and more of us could be trapped renting for decades or even a lifetime. Homes are the foundations of our lives and private renters need those strong foundations as badly as anyone else.

When Generation Rent first called for the end of Section 21 over a decade ago, we were laughed out of rooms for being unrealistic. The change we have seen since then is proof that renters have been able to have a real say in the decisions that affect our lives, and that our voices have the power to reshape our world. Now, for the first time in a generation, millions of renters can look to the future with greater security, confidence, and hope.

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No family should lose their home on a landlord’s whim

“There’s no light in the kitchen. The family are using a desk lamp in there, and there’s no cooker that works. There’s water running down the walls. We sent blankets home for the kids. But they don’t want to complain – they will be thrown out, and that means temporary accommodation – and you know it will be one of those hotels on the Hagley Road in Birmingham … and how will they get the kids to school?”

I was sat with the safeguarding lead for one of my primary schools, talking about one of their families and their private rented flat. Just another day as teacher in one of the lowest income areas of the country.

This story is a composite – but my inbox and my surgeries are full of them. I have talked to so many families, out of their minds with worry about keeping their kids in school, clutching an unwanted Section 21 or an unreasonable rent rise letter.

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After two decades of campaigning for renters, I became the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury in the Black Country in 2024. We are proud and we are resilient, but 50 years of deindustrialisation and 14 long years of Tory austerity mean wages are low and poverty is high. Social renting is about a third – but private renting is rising fast, up to nearly a quarter of all households.

Much of the private rented sector in my ends is former council homes sold off over decades, leaving families who might once have expected lifelong security exposed to higher costs and instability. And my towns have few professional renters, no student blocks – but an increasing number of poorly managed Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) rented out by the room, aimed squarely at those with few other choices.

I think of the renters I have met these last two years – struggling with rogue landlords and high rents, nervous every day to raise the gas safety certificate four months overdue, the back door that doesn’t close, the fan heater which eats money cos the landlord won’t fix the central heating.

From 1st May, that changes. No more no fault evictions. No more Section 21 letters dropping like a bombshell on an unsuspecting family. Every renter will now have a rolling tenancy. If they keep up with the rent, they keep their home.

The law now recognises a simple truth that renters have always known: a home is not a favour that can be withdrawn at will. It is the foundation of family life, security and dignity.

For 40 years, Section 21 stacked the cards firmly in favour of the landlord’s right to profit from an asset, over the renter’s right to a stable home. And that power imbalance meant renters constantly worried about whether they’d be able to keep their kids in school and stay in their home. It kept people silent about disrepair, afraid to complain, reluctant to put down roots.

But no more. That is why the end of Section 21 matters so deeply. Renters will now know that no one can throw them out of their home just cos. Landlords will still be able to run their businesses; they will have clear grounds to regain their property when they genuinely need to. But risk – previously wholly borne by renters – will finally be shared.

And a safe, decent home matters too. Applying the Decent Homes Standard to private renting, bringing in Awaab’s Law, and backing councils to enforce the rules will finally tackle the damp, mould, faulty electrics and infestations that I have seen renter after renter forced to endure. A landlord who will not fix a home should not be rewarded.

In Tipton and Wednesbury, what many of my constituents actually need is a social home. But with 21,000 households on the waiting list locally, no matter how much we build (and we are building as much as we can), that won’t be where many families live. So getting the quality of private rents up, making them secure, giving families a home they know they can stay in – that matters. 

So to everyone who rents their home, I say this: this Labour Government has your back. No more no fault evictions. Security for families. Safer homes. Proper action on rogue landlords.

Over the last two years, I have voted for this change over and over – so many times, as the landlord lobby mounted one last stand for their right to control tenants’ lives through the House of Lords.

Take a moment to feel proud. All of us who kept on taking on the landlord lobby, who kept on standing up for renters – all of us who voted in a Labour government – we made this happen. 

Antonia Bance is the Labour MP for Tipton and Wednesbury in the West Midlands. Before her election she was a senior trade union officer at the TUC. She was previously head of campaigns at Shelter and a board member of both the Nationwide Foundation and Generation Rent.

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Why managing agents must finally be regulated

Nearly three and a half million British households live in their leasehold flats, managed under a service charge arrangement with a managing agent.

Managing agents go by many names: property managers, building managers, block managers, estate managers, but they all – by and large – do a similar job. They manage multi-occupancy buildings – low rise and high-rise blocks of flats – or estates. Their duties include everything from building maintenance to keeping shared areas and spaces clean and tidy. In more recent years, since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, they have also taken on an increasingly complex set of tasks around building safety. As it stands right now, however, anyone could set themselves up as a managing agent – no qualifications, no experience, no oversight.

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Residents are at the coalface of dealing with their managing agents. They pay a service charge so that day-to-day work on their buildings gets addressed in a timely manner (think everything from cleaning the hallways to fixing the roof to dealing with complex building fire and safety compliance issues).

Over the last few years there has been growing disquiet from leaseholders, that I and my colleagues have witnessed through our parliamentary inboxes, with concerns about managing agents – mainly relating to increased service charges, but also about service failures and delays, and value for money.

Whilst many managing agents operate in the right and proper way, sadly, there are still far too many who do not.

And whilst many do operate in a good way – supported with best practice and training by organisations like The Property Institute (the managing agent sector’s professional body) – the actions of the rogue and unscrupulous managing agents, as well as those who need to urgently pull their socks up and do a better job, are overtly impacting the reputation of the wider industry. There is a cross-party consensus that we need to root out the bad apples, but the question is, how?

Why statutory regulation is now unavoidable

I find it chilling that you, me, or anyone else could set up as a managing agent tomorrow. 

Multi-occupancy buildings are getting ever-more complex, and managing agents are taking on gravely serious responsibilities – at its most acute; the lives, welfare and safety of those people who live within the buildings they manage.

That’s why I’m pushing for the statutory regulation of managing agents and an Independent Regulator of Managing Agents through my Private Member’s Bill. This would mean that these individuals and companies must be trained, competent, qualified and registered to be able to operate – all things that stakeholders, including the profession itself, have been campaigning on for many years. Indeed, my colleagues in the Labour for Leaseholders group have rightly been holding the sector’s feet to the fire to improve the way it delivers for residents. And this Private Member’s Bill is to complement – not take away from – the continuing work that the Government are doing to make good on Labour’s promise of sweeping leasehold reform prior to the last General Election, through the Draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill which is currently working its way through parliament.

Of course, one remedy of regulation will be to see off the poor practice that blights some leaseholders, but it also goes far beyond that- to the very core of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of those that live in these buildings.

Regulation will have a small cost, but that is a price worth paying and after all, the costs of failure are often even higher – legal fees, wasted time pursuing redress and extortionate fees on failed services.

Whilst regulation may not currently be in vogue, due to the necessity to secure growth urgently – it’s not hard to argue that the leaseholder product has been damaged commercially by the failure of the sector of managing agents. A focused regulator can provide much needed reassurance to consumers, a boost to sales and, ultimately, housebuilding as a result. 

We regulate airlines, financial markets, dentists, and food hygiene standards – so why would we not want to regulate a sector that is about the safety of where millions of our friends, family and neighbours call home?

If you’re interested in supporting my Private Member’s Bill, why not take a moment to write to your local MP to give your views? You can find your MP’s contact details here.

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England’s Leasehold Reforms Risk Harming Community Land Trusts

Leasehold is the legal mechanism that makes the Community Land Trust model work. Without an exemption for CLTs, the draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill risks unintentionally undermining one of the few proven models for permanently affordable, community-controlled land and housing.

In the slow march to end feudal property arrangements since 2017, community-led and cooperative models have been largely overlooked. That’s a mistake, as these models could better achieve some of the Government’s aims.

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Governments have been consulting and legislating on this since at least 2017. The Law Commission undertook a major study on leasehold from 2018 to 2020, and the Competition and Markets Authority looked at private estate management in 2023 and 2024.

The reform aims are right – to ban “feudal” arrangements in which homeowners are subject to unaccountable gouging by third-party landlords and managing agents.

But the Government’s solutions are narrow.

In its draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill, the Government wants to replace leasehold with commonhold for blocks of flats. Separate consultations propose moving to resident management companies (RMCs) for estates. Both hand ownership and control back to homeowners. It sounds good, but there are other models that are also resident-controlled and which should be considered.

A better model for democratic local stewardship

Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are already taking ownership of, and managing, blocks of flats and estates. Like commonhold they are resident-controlled and owned, and their statutory definition goes further to ensure they must be non-profit and act for the wellbeing of the community. They decommodify land and buildings in a co-operative structure.

But unlike commonhold and RMCs, their membership includes the whole local community in the neighbourhood, not just the homeowners in the block. Renters can have equal power and voice as owners. CLTs can take ownership of multiple developments across a neighbourhood, instead of setting up dozens of tiny companies and boards, one for each block of flats or new estate.

CLTs balance the interests of current occupants and future generations, ensuring that current occupants pay fair fees and that assets are looked after, while also protecting affordable homes and community assets from carpetbagging. They enable communities to act as wise stewards of their place. Many devolve day-to-day management of the homes and communal spaces to occupants, sometimes leasing them to resident associations or companies, while acting as a steward that can step in to help.

CLTs also have purposes broader than simply maintaining assets. They almost always leverage their ownership of homes and community facilities to proactively develop more, contributing to the Government’s growth and housing agendas. This in turn helps to attract more directors, make them more financially sustainable, and furthers the interests of the wider local community.

The benefit of this model over RMCs became very apparent in the CLT Network’s work on a major Ofwat-funded innovation project looking at ‘water smart communities’. We need to build more water-efficient homes with site-wide rainwater harvesting and flood mitigation. But it would be a tall order to ask small site-by-site RMCs to take responsibility for managing these complex assets, as well as the relationships with the Highways Authority, water companies and other stakeholders. It would be much more viable to do this at a town or neighbourhood scale, through adoption of potentially dozens of developments by a single local authority or CLT.

None of this is to say that commonhold and resident management companies are bad models. They’re just not the only resident-controlled model available, and have risks.

Why Community Land Trusts depend on leasehold

But the Government has largely ignored the CLT alternative. In its Draft Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Bill risks ruling them out. Leasehold is the legal mechanism that makes the CLT model work. By retaining the freehold of the land and granting long leases over individual homes and other assets, CLTs separate land value from building value and hold that land in common ownership for the long term. That legal separation is what enables the CLT to lock in affordability, prevent speculative windfalls, and steward assets for future generations.

Take two models common in the USA, There, CLTs buy the freehold of land which they lease to condominium associations (like commonhold associations), enabling occupants to self-manage under their stewardship. They also often buy flats in condominium blocks built by others, selling or renting them as permanently affordable homes. The homeowners and renters can all join the CLT, and a third of board places are reserved for them. Commonhold and CLTs could co-exist.

Ministers should protect CLTs in the Bill

In the two acts of legislation on leasehold reform to date, previous governments have recognised the value of the CLT model and enabled it by exception. CLTs have been exempted from the ban on leasehold houses and residential ground rents. But the draft Bill currently fails to carry this forward and would not permit the two co-existence models common in the USA.

The Government’s consultation on reducing the prevalence of private estate management arrangements similarly focuses on RMCs as a solution and gives little attention to community models like CLTs, though officials have shown interest.

The opportunity here goes wider than ending the feudal leasehold and estate management practices.

The Government is wrestling with the right way to help communities take back control. With the Pride in Place neighbourhood boards, the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill’s unspecified neighbourhood governance arrangements, and now with commonhold and RMCs, the Government risks creating a disjointed patchwork of community voice and control. At the neighbourhood level, communities struggle to stitch these together into something like a coherent approach.

Models like the Community Land Trust offer one solution, creating a general-purpose community stewardship body with a statutory footing that can stitch together new development, regeneration funding, saving existing assets, etc. It would embed democratic, accountable resident control across these priorities with a consistent, understood and robust model. Ministers should look again at a co-operative solution that communities themselves are championing.

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Boosting housing supply in Australia and Canada: much more than planning de-regulation

‘The national project to make housing more affordable is focused entirely on increasing supply [and] … The plan for meeting the supply target is to change planning laws and allow more density in middle suburbs…’ So wrote revered Australian economic analyst, Alan Kohler in 2025.

Especially when it comes to the official narratives accompanying national housing policy in the 2020s, similar comments could be made for other countries including Canada and the UK, to name but two.

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Even so, Kohler’s pithy summary underplays the diverse range of approaches that governments are nowadays deploying in their housing supply-focused efforts.

Moreover, while largely centred on planning reform and other ‘market enabling’ measures, initiatives in Canada and Australia now include direct commissioning and funding of housing construction on a scale without recent precedent.

To identify internationally adaptable approaches to boosting housing supply, our new study compared the post-pandemic housing market challenges and policy approaches of Canada and Australia, two of the world’s most comparable nations.

Structural factors

In both countries housing affordability challenges have come to the fore in policy and political debate since the 2010s, with rising house prices and rents generally outpacing incomes. Thus, Canada’s national house price-to-income ratio rose from under 4.0 in 2003 to 7.7 by 2022, with a similar increase observed in Australia.

At the same time, the nature of the housing supply challenge in the early 2020s contrasts significantly across the two countries. Most notably, trends in apartment construction have markedly diverged. By 2024, such building starts had fallen by 48% from their 2016 peak in Australia, whereas Canadian unit commencements had surged by 71% over this period.

The main explanation for this contrast appears to be the revived vitality of Canada’s purpose-built rental (PBR) apartment industry in the post-Great Financial Crisis era. This is a sector far more strongly represented here than in Australia. Canada’s PBR construction surged more than threefold in the decade to 2024, representing a remarkable 42% of all housebuilding by that date.

As shown by the Canadian PBR industry’s relatively stable output in the immediate post-pandemic era, this speaks to the product’s resilience in the face of challenging market conditions. While abetted by favourable lending and mortgage insurance policies, the main explanation is probably the over-riding priority PBR investors place on long-term rental returns. This leaves them relatively sanguine about short-term market conditions and prospects.

Encouraging planning liberalisation

Efforts to both liberalise land-use zoning restrictions and streamline development approval processes are indeed central to contemporary pro-housing supply efforts in the two countries. However, federal administrations are constitutionally constrained here. Lacking powers to mandate planning policy (controlled by state/territory/local governments), federal influence must be transmitted indirectly.

In Australia this has been recently progressed under the Albanese government via the 2022 National Housing Accord. Central to this inter-governmental agreement was the commitment by signatory federal, state/territory and local authorities to ‘[i]mproving zoning, planning and land release’.

Accord participants also endorsed a national housebuilding goal to construct 1 million new dwellings 2024-29, later upped to 1.2 million homes within that timeframe. The federal government pledged a $AUD3B ‘New Home Bonus’ payable to state/territory governments conditional on achievement of jurisdiction-specific building targets.

Parallel Canadian efforts have centred on the federal Housing Accelerator Fund (HAF), a $CAN4B program to incentivise planning and other relevant reform by local governments. More subtly, HAF payments are intended to support municipalities growing housing supply ‘faster than [the local] historical average’.

As operationalised since 2023, Canada’s HAF program has involved federal-municipal agreements where, in exchange for pledged federal payments, lower tier governments have committed to specific planning reforms and other undertakings to expand housebuilding.

Beyond their status as ‘reward payments’ for relaxing or simplifying land use planning’, Canadian HAF subsidies fund other municipality actions on housing supply. This includes local commitments to channel such funds into affordable housing construction.

Other pro-supply measures

As unpacked in our research, though, pro-housing supply measures in both countries extend well beyond planning liberalisation. As represented to some degree in both Canada and Australia, these include:

  • Infrastructure funding support
  • Low-cost debt facilities and development de-risking
  • Federal property tax reform
  • Workforce capacity building
  • Technological development
  • Government-funded housing production
  • Identifying and allocating public land for affordable non-market development.

Generally, these interventions have been disproportionately larger and more ambitious in the Canadian case – especially when it comes to de-risking private housing development, and in financial support pledged for pre-fabricated (or ‘modular’) housing construction.

But, while ‘market enabling’ measures remain dominant, recent initiatives have seen both countries also pledging muscular interventions in the commissioning and funding of housing for both sub-market rent and sale. The new Build Canada Homes agency launched by the Carney government is tasked with ‘[constructing] affordable housing at scale’ – including $CAN4B loans and $CAN6B contributions to [non-market] ‘deeply affordable housing, supportive housing, Indigenous housing, and shelters’.

Meanwhile the Australian Government pledged in 2025 to commission 100,000 homes for (ring-fenced) sale to first home buyers over eight years. This revives a practice which contributed significantly to expanding Australian home ownership under the Keynesian consensus of the early post-war period, although subsequently absent for half a century until now.

The modern pre-occupation with expanding housing production while doing little to dampen housing demand remains highly questionable. But the range of pro-supply initiatives proceeding in countries such as Canada and Australia is far broader than the dominant ‘planning deregulation’ narrative implies. These extend to measures that, in their interventionist nature, arguably challenge decades of neo-liberal orthodoxy.

Much like its Australian and Canadian counterparts, the Starmer government’s housing reform narrative has overstated the scope for easing housing affordability through planning reform.

Lessons for the UK

As in those comparator nations, UK governments need to shift away from over-reliance on blanket efforts to boost market supply through development approval deregulation. Instead, taking a leaf out of Canadian and Australian books, the promised national housing strategy for England should embrace a wider range of pro-supply initiatives.

Emulating recent boundary-pushing measures under Premiers Carney and Albanese these measures should include more direct interventions that recall an earlier post-war era when such actions were standard practice.

Hal Pawson is an Emeritus Professor at the University of New South Wales Sydney. Steve Pomeroy is an Industry Professor at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.

A version of this article first appeared on Australia’s Fifth Estate site. 

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Why the construction sector needs social housing

Two construction workers with a block of flats behind them

With 169,000 children growing up in temporary accommodation – the highest number since records began – the case for the government’s manifesto commitment to ‘deliver the biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation’ is overwhelming. This situation damages children’s health and development, and it is costing councils across England £7.7 million every day. It is a national scandal whose social and financial costs are well-understood.

But social housing does more than provide an alternative to poor-quality homes. It is also the foundation of a successful housebuilding system. Building social homes at scale – including during market downturns – can underpin the government’s response to the crisis in construction skills and innovation. Far from being in conflict, social housing and market housing can support each other.

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The inherent limitations of the UK’s development model

In a housebuilding system which relies excessively on speculative market housing, developers compete against each other to pay the most for land. Having taken on a large upfront risk through high land costs, developers then need to recoup their investment, building as slowly as necessary to maintain prices. But when sales prices soften, even moderately, market housing starts plummet. Developers are not incentivised to start new schemes if they will have to sell homes for less than they assumed when buying land.

To make matters worse, in tandem with increasing dependence on this speculative model of market supply, the UK’s social housing supply model has become pro-cyclical. Post-war social housing developments were close to 100% social housing. Most costs were covered by grant, and land was assembled at low cost outside the speculative market. This model was insulated from market cycles, allowing the supply of social homes to continue during downturns in private housebuilding. In other words, social housing supply at this time was counter-cyclical.

From the 1980s, the dominant supply model for social housing flipped: grant rates were cut, borrowing costs rose, social landlords had to start competing with private developers in the land market. As a result, an expanded range of ‘affordable housing’ tenures (with costs pegged to market prices) has become increasingly dependent on cross-subsidy from the profits of building market housing. Far from smoothing out the boom and bust cycle of speculative private housebuilding, this model of building social housing intensifies those peaks and troughs. This doesn’t just affect how many homes are built. It shapes how the construction sector itself operates.

Supporting the UK’s construction sector

Ratcheting down: Private housing completions in England since 1946

Over repeated cycles of the housing market, the total output of speculative development is ratcheting downward. As housing starts plummet, so too does the demand for skills and materials. Many construction workers simply leave the sector, often permanently. It is no coincidence that construction workers are more likely to be self-employed than workers in any other sector. Today, more people are leaving the construction sector than joining it, and productivity has remained stubbornly flat for decades. Why would housebuilders maintain a large permanent workforce, or invest in the skills of that workforce, when they know they will need to retrench supply as the market turns?

Because firms cannot predict demand, materials prices have become more volatile. Official statistics show sharp swings in construction output and brick deliveries, worsening shortages and price spikes in an import-dependent system. As the construction industry has adapted to manage the risks of cyclical demand, construction capacity has atrophied.

The long-heralded shift to modern methods of construction (MMC) has also stalled. The speculative, stop-start nature of the industry makes the expense and risks of investment in innovation unattractive. Investors are reluctant to commit to factories which will be moth-balled at the first signs of the next housing market slowdown.

From stop-start to build, baby, build

A more balanced system would combine market housing with a counter-cyclical social housing programme, alongside new market models based on stable demand such as Build to Rent.

When governments fund and enable social housing at scale, it can be built as fast as need demands and construction capacity allows. As the Farmer Review of the UK Construction Labour Model found in 2016, a major programme of social housing would support predictability of demand for labour, skills and materials, resulting in a less risky operating environment for housebuilders, developers and planners. The booms and busts of cyclical market supply are smoothed out by counter-cyclical social supply, so capacity can be maintained and increased despite housing market cycles.

In countries such as Japan and Sweden, innovations and new technologies have thrived on this certainty, creating new opportunities to expand development capacity. It is no coincidence that the last time that modern methods of construction made a major contribution to overall housing supply in the UK was during the post-war social housing boom.

Of course, the benefits of a more sustainable skills base and of innovation in construction today would be felt far beyond the developments which first enabled them. If social housing schemes keep construction workers in the sector during market downturns, those experienced workers will be available to the private sector when the market recovers. If social housing schemes provide enough stable demand to keep MMC providers in business, market housing will be able to benefit from their services, too. While construction capacity is often seen as a constraint on building more social housing, the reverse is also true. A stable pipeline of social housing would expand capacity, supporting more jobs, stronger skills, and greater innovation across the sector.

The government’s new Social and Affordable Homes Programme 2026-36 represents the most significant policy shift back towards a counter-cyclical social housing supply model in decades. A future blog will explore how this could work in practice, and what further changes are needed.

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