Angela Rayner has insisted the government can meet its target to build 1.5m homes over the next five years as ministers pledged an extra £350m for housebuilding.
An extra £300m has been injected to the affordable homes programme, a move ministers believe will allow 2,800 additional homes to be built.
More than half of these extra homes will be for social rent, the government has said, while more than 250 council homes are expected to be made available through a £50m boost to the local authority housing fund.
The scale of the challenge is stark, with more than 123,000 households in temporary accommodation – including nearly 160,000 children – while almost 6,000 families with children are in bed and breakfast accommodation.
Asked whether she was worried about whether the government could meet the 1.5m homes target, Ms Rayner said she was “determined” to meet the challenge.
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“We will meet that target because we can’t afford not to,” she told broadcasters.
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“We have 1.3 million people waiting on housing waiting lists, there isn’t a person listening to this show that will not know somebody who is desperate to get on the housing ladder.
“So, therefore, we’re determined to turn that tide.”
And pressed on whether the expected 250 increase of council homes was a big enough increase to meet the need, Ms Rayner said: “We think the measures we’re taking will unlock thousands more council and social homes as part of that programme. We want to help councils who want to build those homes.
“We see 160,000 children in temporary accommodation, and the cost of that on local authorities is significant, as well as the impact on children’s life chances,” she said.
“So we need to build the homes, and we’re doing everything we can to turn the tide of decline and build the houses that people desperately need.”
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The extra £350m promised comes on top of £500m that was earmarked for affordable housing in October’s budget.
According to housing charity Shelter, at least 90,000 social rent homes would need to be built each year for the next 10 years to clear most social housing waiting lists in England and to house every homeless household.
A report by MPs last month found that a record number of children are living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit as England’s homelessness crisis pushes councils to breaking point.
MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said there was a “dire need” for housing reform, with the lack of affordable homes forcing cash-strapped local authorities to haemorrhage their funds on temporary accommodation.
A recent Sky News investigation found that children in some parts of England were spending as long as five-and-a-half years on average in temporary accommodation.
The length of stay has increased significantly in many areas since 2021, with particularly long stays in London and the South East.
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Elsewhere, ministers are expected to set out plans to crack down on exploitative behaviour by rogue landlords who they say are costing the taxpayer by claiming uncapped housing benefit in return for providing homes that are unsuitable.
Last week the government announced that a law to force social landlords to investigate and fix hazards within a set timescale will be phased in from October.
The legislation is named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died in December 2020 from a respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in the social home his family rented in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
