Incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham has placed building new council housing at the centre of his domestic agenda, pledging to launch what he describes as the “biggest building programme since the post-war period”.
Central to this aim is a proposal to unlock public land and transfer it to local authorities to deliver more council housing, signalling his intention for housing delivery to be driven increasingly by local government. Burnham has indicated that he will instruct the Treasury to release land held across government departments.
Burnham argues that the country has been caught in a “housing trap” following Right to Buy and has made clear his preference for new homes on public land to be “council houses built by local authorities”. Launching his Makerfield parliamentary by-election campaign, he said:
“The reason I use that phrase [council housing], rather than social homes, is because we’ve … gone down a path in this country where we’ve taken everything out of local democratic control”
Burnham seemingly favours redirecting a larger portion of the Government’s £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme, currently allocated to several bodies including housing associations, to local authorities.
He has pledged to make greater use of “public land, vacant public land to reduce costs”, with his proposed No 10 North expected to lead on both devolution and the delivery of the programme. This potential restructuring was addressed during a Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee meeting on 14th July, where Housing Secretary Steve Reed MP confirmed he had met with Burnham to brief him on the work of MHCLG. When asked if moving responsibility for council house building policy from MHCLG to the office of the Prime Minister would improve policy outcomes, Reed declined to confirm the proposal.
Burnham’s ambitions undoubtedly address a genuine problem. As of 2025, more than 1.3 million households are on social housing waiting lists, council housing stock has been declining for decades, and local authority housebuilding is a mere fraction of the levels achieved in the 1950s and 60s. Whilst his aspiration is both ambitious and welcome, successive administrations have also sought to release public sector land for development with limited success. Historically, sites have proved too small and costly to develop, constrained by existing operational uses or the reluctance of government departments to hand over land.
Perhaps the largest obstacle, however, is the planning system itself. Releasing additional land does not immediately translate to an increased supply of built homes. While it may achieve an increased number of planning consents, councils and any developers appointed by them still need to navigate a dysfunctional planning system fraught with delays, regulatory requirements and resource constraints.
Capacity represents another obstacle. Releasing more land does not create more bricklayers, contractors or building materials. Unlike the post-war period, most local authorities no longer maintain in-house building departments or large direct labour organisations capable of constructing housing at scale. Funding also remains a significant question given that the country currently faces £3 trillion of national debt and 35 councils are receiving “Exceptional Financial Support”, with several more being categorised with “Best Value Notices”. Meanwhile Local Government Reorganisation will add further complications over the coming years as officers inevitably move councils and both officers and members grapple with running the new larger authorities.
Looking ahead, a proposal of this ambition and scale is laudable but likely to take years to materialise. Unless Burnham can reverse Labour’s current polling trajectory in the next three years, it is possible that much of this aspiration may never be fully implemented.
