In yesterday’s Spending Review Chancellor Rishi Sunak, as part of a new ‘national infrastructure strategy’, announced the launch of a new £7.1bn National Home Building Fund. This investment is said to be an addition to the £12.2bn Affordable Homes Programme previously announced.
Sunak said: “To help finance our plans, I can announce we will establish a new UK infrastructure bank.”
“Headquartered in the north of England, the bank will work with the private sector to finance major new investment projects across the UK, starting this spring.”
Further to the chancellor’s speech, Spending Review documents were published revealing further details of this new fund:
- The initial £7bn investment is set to be spread over four years and predicted to create up to 860,000 homes
- £4.8bn of capital grant funding, including for land remediation, land assembly and infrastructure investment
- Delivery of the Brownfield Fund, announced at Budget 2020 for Mayoral Combined Authorities
- For non-Mayoral Combined Authorities in 2021-22 an additional £100m will be provided to support “housing delivery and regeneration, including unlocking brownfield sites, regenerating estates and releasing public sector land – including serviced plots for self and custom builders”
- Housebuilders across the country will be supported by £2.2bn of new loan finance which will include delivering Help to Build for custom and self-builders, and funding for SMEs and modern methods of construction
- Further funding for the NHBF will be confirmed at the next multi-year review
- £10bn promised to support infrastructure needed for new homes and £12.2bn through the Affordable Homes Programme to deliver up to 180,000 new homes for affordable homeownership and rent.
Ambitions announced by the government last year to build to build a million new homes over the next five years and to increase housebuilding levels to an average of 300,000 new build homes per year by the mid-2020s, are now seeming harder to achieve due to the impact of the pandemic.
This pledge of £20 billion to support new housing from 2020-21, including the introduction of a £7.1 billion National Home Building Fund is therefore refreshing to see and hopefully a step in the right direction.