Building Homes and Renewing Communities

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Thursday 3rd September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on her appointment. I look forward to our exchanges, and to working with her and her team.

There are millions fewer council houses than there used to be, yet the need for social housing has only increased, not least given the scourge of poor-quality temporary accommodation for too many children. The Shared Health Foundation has found that in the last six years, temporary accommodation has been noted by the coroner as a contributory factor in the deaths of 104 children.

In Taunton and Wellington and elsewhere, all that people see are unprecedented plans for private housing that many will not be able to afford. Councils have been instructed by Whitehall to consent to homes for 180,000 people in Somerset over the next 15 years—a 25% increase in the pace of growth, never seen in the county’s history. What we need instead is a truly ambitious programme of council and social housing—not the Government’s reannouncement that 60% of its 300,000 programme will be social housing and not the 18,000 per year, but the Lib Dem policy of 150,000 social homes a year.

I recognise that the statement confirms around 46,000 social homes over 10 years, with further tranches to come, but will the Housing Secretary and the new Prime Minister, who has said a lot about social housing, raise the target from 18,000 a year or not? Will the Government raise their £3.9 billion funding to our proposed £6 billion? If they will not do that, will they write off some of the councils’ housing revenue account debt so that councils such as Somerset can build the 600 council houses that they would build if they could?

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue, which is one that the Prime Minister feels incredibly passionate about. He has committed to delivering the biggest council house building programme since the post-war boom ended in the early 1980s, and although I recognise the challenges, I also want to celebrate the fact that last year, councils built the most council houses since records began in 1991. However, we want to see that ramp up with the money we are investing to help councils, as I outlined earlier.

We have already taken measures, as Members can see from the legislation that is going through at the moment—it has been through the other place—to tighten up the right to buy and make sure that councils keep full receipts. We are supporting that programme, and we should recognise the significance of the £10 billion of investment that was announced last month. This is about making sure that we get that money out the door so that we can build those homes, and the planning reforms we have introduced are about making sure that people have a say about those homes, but also about having clarity, so that the homes and the infrastructure around them are built.

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the number of children in temporary accommodation. I still think it is absolutely awful that those children are in those circumstances, and that is why we want to tackle social housing in particular.