UCL survey finds 95% of English councils now actively engaged in housing delivery

Some 95% of English local authorities are now actively engaged in housing delivery, according to the fifth round of research by Professor Janice Morphet and Professor Ben Clifford of the Bartlett School of Planning at UCL, published by the Housing Forum on 21 October.

The Housing Forum said councils are using tools including direct development, joint ventures, council-owned companies and affordable housing programmes. It said the research found 82% of local authorities committed to providing affordable housing, the highest level since the series began tracking activity.

Morphet, a visiting professor at UCL's Bartlett School of Planning, wrote in her own account of the research for the University of Birmingham's INLOGOV blog that 82% of councils had increased affordable housing in their areas.

Janice Morphet, Visiting Professor at UCL's Bartlett School of Planning, said: "Local authorities are providing more homes than popularly acknowledged."

The findings

The 2026 survey found 57% of councils are acquiring homes to add to their stock, Morphet said. About half of local authorities retain and develop social rent homes using government subsidy, according to her account.

Where councils work with developers, Morphet said they have been able to agree purchases of unsold new homes at different points in construction. She cited council-owned companies such as WV Living in Wolverhampton and Goram Homes in Bristol as examples of direct delivery vehicles.

Morphet also set out the constraints on council activity. Housing construction costs have risen since 2022, she said, while subsidies and restrictions on the use of right to buy receipts have limited local authority investment in housing delivery.

The method

The research has run over five waves since 2017, with rounds in 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2026, each using the same methods, Morphet said. The first stage is a desk examination of each council's documents, reports, websites and records.

The full report, titled the 2026 desk survey report, is linked as a PDF from the Housing Forum post.

Official figures

Official statistics from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) point in the same direction. Local authorities delivered 10,480 affordable homes in 2024-25, or 16% of all new affordable completions, the highest recorded value since 1991-92, according to MHCLG.

The council share of affordable delivery has risen from 11% in 2018-19 to 16% in 2024-25, the department said.

Year	Local authority share of affordable completions
2018-19	11%
2024-25	16%

Across all providers, 64,762 affordable homes were delivered in England in 2024-25, up 1% on the previous year, MHCLG said. Of those, 12,198 were new social rent homes, the highest number since 2012-13.

Affordable housing starts on site in England reached 45,418 in 2024-25, a 3% increase on the previous year, according to MHCLG.

Why it matters

The Housing Forum said the report highlights opportunities for stronger collaboration between councils, housing associations, developers and the wider supply chain. The organisation describes itself as the only cross-sector, industry-wide body representing the whole housing supply chain, with more than 150 members spanning councils, housing associations, investors, manufacturers and consultants.

The series has so far been repeated in 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2026, Morphet said.