The House of Commons Housing Committee chair said the spending review would “give Labour the opportunity to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years”.
Florence Eshalomi, chairman of the Housing, Community and Local Government Committee, wrote to the Prime Minister to “emphasize the importance of social and affordable housing investment”.
Eshalomi warned Rachel Reeves that “the government would not be able to achieve this if the private sector was relying solely on the private sector” to achieve its goal of building about 300,000 homes a year.
The letter from the Housing Commission chairperson reportedly said that Housing Minister Angela Rayner, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and Energy Minister Ed Miliband are the remaining three ministers who hold more cash before announcing the government’s multi-year settlement next Wednesday.
Reeves hopes to spend up to £113 billion throughout the parliament, such as defence, infrastructure, housing and transportation, while limiting daily sector costs.
But Eshalomi said: “Despite the cross-party consensus that the need to increase the construction of houses, successive governments have failed to provide enough new homes for decades.
“This has led to a housing affordability crisis, with families waiting on social housing waiting lists for years, and the dream of home ownership disappearing.”
She stressed that the Shelter, Crisis and National Housing Federation said the government should set a goal to provide 90,000 social rental housing annually to start addressing England’s growing social housing waiting list.
Eshalomi wrote that 1977 was the last time 300,000 homes were built in the UK in a year.
“That year, local authorities built more houses than private enterprises,” Eshalomi added.
