Sian Berry, MP for Brighton Pavilion has responded to the Chancellor’s Budget announcements for council housing and developer support. She says:
“An extra £1.5 billion for council home building compared with £4.7 billion going towards private sales is the wrong priority and shows that the Chancellor is still paying more attention to developers than local councils. To truly end the housing crisis all of this money should be going into real social housing, but the figures show that his first-time buyer fund will help housebuilders shift 20,000 new-build homes, while only 10,000 new social homes are expected from these announcements. [1]
“The scale of the new homelessness funding the Chancellor has had to provide today, just in order to keep people from having to sleep on the streets, shows how acute the crisis of council housing is. So the Government needs to do much better than yet another Budget focused on helping private developers. [2]
“The missing piece of the housing puzzle has for many years been funding to help councils to ‘buy the supply’ – to acquire homes to use immediately as real council homes, restoring to public ownership some of the net 1.3 million council homes lost since 1980 to Right to Buy. New Economics Foundation has pointed to long term efforts in Brighton as a good example of councils doing what they can, just this week, saying “Last year, Brighton Council also approved a budget of £50m to acquire 200 homes over two years, in what has been dubbed “right to buy in reverse” but more funding is much needed’.[3,4]
“The Chancellor should have stepped up today with a massive new Buy the Supply fund that would save every year in short-term temporary accommodation costs, and at the same time create new council homes to help families build a better future for themselves in the long term.”
ENDS
Notes
1. Extracts from Budget 2026 document pages 89-90 on the expected results for social housing subsidy compared with the Your First Home scheme:
5.4 The government is providing an additional £1.5 billion to deliver around 10,000 homes in England.167 This funding will be prioritised for Social Rent, especially council homes. This takes total investment in the Social and Affordable Homes Programme to more than £40 billion over 10 years.168 This funding will be allocated between 2027-28 to 2030-31 and will increase over the period to allow councils to build capacity.
5.5 The government is also supporting people without access to the ‘bank of mum and dad’ to buy their own homes. The new £4.7 billion Your First Home scheme will help around 70,000 households in England to take their first step onto the housing ladder and support the delivery of an estimated 20,000 new homes.
2. Extract from Budget 2026 document table on page 102, showing the expected scale of annual rough sleeping spending (additional funds announced today):
33 Rough Sleeping: Invest in a route off the streets across the Parliament, alongside longer term accommodation and intensive support
Spend
26-27 -£175m
27-28 -£515m
28-29 -£580m
29-30 -£85m
30-31 -£90m
31-32 -£95m
3. The missing piece of the housing puzzle: buying back council homes. New Economics Foundation, Oct 2026 https://neweconomics.org/2026/10/the-missing-piece-of-the-housing-puzzle-buying-back-council-homes
4. Sian Berry MP’s Buy the Supply campaign – the case for a fund, evidence base on lost council housing, and petition signed by 4,000 people so far: www.sianberry.org.uk/buy-the-supply-evidence