Social Housing

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for her warm reception for the announcement made at the spending review, and to the many social housing bodies that have echoed her words. We will work with the sector at pace to design the programme. We have provided certainty that it will be for a full 10 years; our providers wanted that certainty, and we were pleased to give it. We have combined that with a 10-year rent settlement that will give social housing providers the support and certainty they need to build the social and affordable homes that are so desperately needed. It is important to note the decline in social home building: in the 1950s, when my town was built, we were building around 200,000 social homes a year, but in recent years, we have built fewer than 10,000. We have a lot of work to do, and we will get on with the job.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

My Lords, where are the plumbers, electricians and builders going to come from to build these houses? Do the Government have plans to increase the number of people in apprenticeships who are being trained for that purpose?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I am pleased to be able to tell the noble Lord that we have a £600 million package for construction skills. We set up the Construction Skills Mission Board under the very able chairmanship of Mark Reynolds from Mace; I worked with Mark and Mace on the regeneration of Stevenage, so I am sure that he will do a fantastic job on that. That will create an extra 60,000 construction worker posts by 2029. There will be 10 new technical excellence colleges. Skills bootcamps have been extended with £100 million of funding, including short-term training for new entrants and upskilling for returners. The Construction Industry Training Board has really stepped up here with funding from industry to fund over 40,000 industry placements and to double the size of the new entrant support scheme to support SMEs to recruit, engage and retain apprentices.