Social Housing Bill [HL]

Lord Truscott Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 1st June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Truscott (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I declare my housing interests as a landlord, leaseholder, former renter and co-chair of the All-Party Group on Leasehold and Commonhold Reform.

The Social Housing Bill before your Lordships’ House is to be welcomed, particularly changes to the right-to-buy system and provisions intended to protect victims of domestic abuse. The Bill should be read alongside His Majesty’s Government’s plan to build 1.5 million homes in England by the end of this Parliament, including some 300,000 social and affordable homes under the affordable homes programme. Of these, at least 60% are intended for social rent over five years—just less than 40,000 a year. HMG have committed £39 billion over 10 years for the new social and affordable homes programme. So far, so good.

However, when you drill down into what is actually happening in the housing sector, the picture is not so rosy. Shelter estimates that 90,000 social rent homes are needed every year for the next 10 years. The reality is that just about 12,000 social rent homes were completed in 2024-25 in England and, over the same period, around 21,000 social homes were lost—almost double.

The impression is that the Government are tinkering around the edges, when what is needed is a radical improvement in the delivery of affordable homes to buy and rent to tackle the current housing crisis head on. Right to buy should not be restricted but should be banned outright, as a first step. In that, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton.

The housing crisis has not been helped by a clear downturn in housing starts over the previous year. In 2025, starts were still 21% below pre-pandemic levels. The housing market is the worst that I have seen in my lifetime, for sellers, buyers and renters. We are witnessing a catastrophic situation. In London, we have witnessed a near collapse in housing starts. Less than 6,000 homes were started in London in 2025, which is about 94% below the level needed. The impact on the supply of affordable homes and sky-high rents is obvious. At the beginning of last year, 23 of the 33 London boroughs recorded zero starts—the lowest level since 2010. For affordable housing, the picture was even worse, with the second-lowest starts on record.

What does this mean for the overall target of 1.5 million homes? London is supposed to deliver a large share of this target—about a third—but current building implies that a large national shortfall is baked in. Starts today drive completion in the next couple of years. With starts this low, completions will drop sharply later this decade, blowing a hole in government targets, and the housing crisis will get only worse. What is needed is a massive post-war-style building programme of social housing and a regulatory and financial environment which allows this to happen. Housing has to be built and viable. Eventually, relaxing the planning application process, as proposed in London, will not suffice. Delivery, not targets and endless consultations, is required. His Majesty’s Government need to wake up to the scale of this crisis and adopt immediate radical measures to deal with it. At the moment, they are in denial over the scale of the housing crisis and adopting piecemeal policies to deal with it.

Another case in point is the state of the existing rental market, in which long-term rental properties are becoming increasingly rare and landlords are turning to virtually unregulated short-let platforms, such as Airbnb. They are doing that because they are bound by few rules, are more lucrative than long-term lets, avoid costly measures such as EPCs, and can easily avoid tax.

These short-let platforms took off only in the last decade. I think that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government does not understand the scale of the problem and the impact on the long-term rental market. There are over 100,000 Airbnb-style short lets in London alone. In the city of Bath, which I know well, with its population of about 100,000 people, there are up to 1,700 Airbnb-style short lets. That is bad for local hotels and B&Bs, let alone for people looking for a long-term rental home. Barcelona is phasing out all short-term tourist flats by 2028, and there are strict restrictions or bans in Florence, New York, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Las Vegas, Penang and other places. A register, as was proposed by the Government, will merely record the problem and do nothing to ease it.

In one block in London that I know well, it took two years and the threat of flat forfeiture to stop a landlord renting through Airbnb, so causing excessive wear and tear, noise nuisance and anti-social behaviour, with visitors arriving at all hours with their suitcases and sometimes staying just a day or two. I look forward to the Government’s new plans to enforce leases in the absence of forfeiture.

To protect our residents in cities and resorts throughout the UK, His Majesty’s Government should institute an immediate ban on these type of short lets and encourage landlords to return to affordable long-term rentals. Some of these landlord properties will undoubtedly be sold, although anecdotal evidence suggests that many trapped landlords are unable to sell in the current dire market conditions.

Currently, the private sector accounts for one out of five households, but the private rental sector has shrunk by 250,000 in the last 12 months. The Minister may continue to deny that, but Savills estimates that 800,000 to 1 million additional private rented homes will be required by 2031. Even if the PRS does not shrink by then—which I doubt, given population and affordability pressures—where are those extra homes to come from? Unlike Airbnb, the PRS is heavily regulated and taxed, buy-to-let mortgages have gone through the roof and interest is no longer tax-deductible. What are His Majesty’s Government doing to expand the PRS? I suspect nothing.

In conclusion, we need to see radical action from the Government to solve our housing crisis, with no more delay and no more dither, through the delivery of a massive affordable and social housing programme and, yes, a more supportive role for the PRS.