National statistics

Affordable housing supply in England: 2022 to 2023

Published 30 November 2023

Applies to England

© Crown copyright 2023

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/affordable-housing-supply-in-england-2022-to-2023/affordable-housing-supply-in-england-2022-to-2023

1. Key statistics

63,605 affordable homes delivered (completions) in England in 2022-23, an increase of 7% compared to the previous year and the highest delivery since 2014-15

64% of new affordable housing completions were for rent (including social, affordable and intermediate rent), similar to the previous 4 years

47% of all affordable homes delivered in 2022-23 were funded through section 106 (nil grant) agreements, compared to 44% in the previous year and the same as in 2020-21

94% of affordable homes delivered in England were new build (excluding unknowns), compared to 93% in the previous year  

58,027 of affordable homes delivered in England were new build in 2022-23, the highest value of new build affordable housing on record

71,046 starts on site in England in 2022-23, an increase of 12% compared to the previous year and the highest value since these data started being collected in 2015-16

Release date: 30 November 2023

Lead Statistician: Miguel Marques dos Santos

Statistical queries: housing.statistics@levellingup.gov.uk

Media enquiries: 0303 444 1209 or NewsDesk@levellingup.gov.uk

2. Introduction

This release presents statistics on additional affordable housing supply in England. The estimates include new build and affordable housing providers’ acquisitions of private housing. Losses through demolitions, sales to tenants and other sales are not included so the statistics here show only new additions (or gross additions) to the affordable housing stock.

Additional affordable homes are defined as housing units (or bed spaces) provided to specified eligible households whose needs are not met by the market in addition to existing stock of affordable housing. Further details on the coverage of this release are given in the technical notes published alongside this release.

Homes England (previously the Homes and Communities Agency) is responsible for delivery of affordable housing in England, except London. They are responsible for increasing the number of new homes that are built in England, including affordable homes. The responsibility for affordable housing in London transferred to the Mayor of London from April 2012. This means that Homes England no longer administer or report on most affordable housing delivery in London, which is now the responsibility of the Greater London Authority.

Figures are presented for financial years ending 31 March and are presented unrounded, unless otherwise noted. They represent our best estimate at the time of publication and may be subject to revisions.

2.1 Affordable housing and social housing

Data on new supply are collected on the basis of new Affordable Housing. The definitions of Affordable and Social Housing overlap for the vast majority of properties, although there are a few differences. First Homes, an Affordable Housing tenure, does not count as Social Housing (where tenure is the type of housing, such as social rent, affordable rent or shared ownership). There are also some other instances where Social Housing and Affordable Housing differ, particularly in intermediate rent and affordable home ownership tenures, but is not possible to identify these instances in the underlying data.

Additionally, Affordable Housing owned by non-registered providers is not counted as Social Housing in the department’s statistical releases. The vast majority of social housing providers will be registered with the Regulator of Social Housing and only these providers can apply for grant funding to provide low cost rental accommodation, such as social rent and affordable rent.

Because the data on new supply are collected for Affordable Housing only, for statistical purposes, an estimate of new Social Housing can be considered a subset of new Affordable Housing provided by local authorities, private registered providers and where there is no provider information (provider unknown) for all tenures excluding First Homes, but including units where the tenure is unknown.

Sections I and J of the Local Authority Housing Statistics (LAHS) are released along with this publication.

Section I covers data on new supply of affordable housing, including delivery not reported by Homes England or the Greater London Authority, delivery in populations of less than 3,000 and financial information regarding section 106 contributions.

Section J covers starts-on-site not reported by Homes England or the Greater London Authority.

There were 63,605 affordable homes delivered in England in 2022-23, an increase of 7% compared with the previous year. This is the highest number of completions since 2014-15, which was the end of the 2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme. This increase in completions coincides with the end of the 2016-23 Affordable Homes Programme. These programmes provide government grant funding to housing providers in England to support the costs of delivering affordable homes. They are the government’s main programme of investment in affordable housing and they are delivered by Homes England and the Greater London Authority.

Chart 1: Affordable housing completions by tenure, England, 1991-92 to 2022-23

The data for this chart are available in Live Table 1000.

The number of affordable homes delivered can vary considerable from year to year. The supply of affordable housing is partly dependent on funding programmes, and as part of a house building cycle, delivery is normally lower in the first years of any new programme and increases to a peak around the end of a programme. The peak in 2014-15 is explained by the end of the 2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme and the increase in the number of completions since 2015-16 reflects the transition to the 2016-23 Affordable Homes Programme. The relative high level of completions in 2022-23 is likely due to the end of the latter programme.

Unlike during the 2011-15 programme, every year between 2015-16 and 2019-20 saw an increase in the delivery of affordable homes.  The decrease in 2020-21 may be due, in large part, to the restrictions introduced during spring 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of completions in 2021-22 was similar to completions in 2019-20, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.

3.1 Delivery of new affordable housing by tenure

There have been changes in the mix of different tenures of affordable housing. Up to 2011-12, social rent was the most common affordable housing tenure for new supply, but affordable rent has become the most common since its introduction in 2011-12. This change was driven in part by the 2011-15 Affordable Homes Programme, as well as subsequent affordable homes programmes, which funded affordable rent as a tenure. Recent programmes have also funded shared ownership, which contributed to an increase in these properties, from 4,084 in 2015-16 to 20,363 in the latest year.

In 2022-23, there were 40,892 new affordable homes for rent [footnote 1], 6% higher than the 38,695 in the previous year. The share of new affordable homes that are for rent was 64%, similar to the previous 4 years but lower than between 2013-14 to 2017-18 when it varied between 74% and 78%.

3.2 Delivery of new affordable housing by provider

In 2022-23, 78% of all affordable housing were delivered by private registered providers, with local authorities delivering 14% and non-registered providers 4% [footnote 2]. There is no provider information on the remaining 4% of all units. There is a small drop of affordable housing delivered by private registered providers compared to the previous 3 years, when it was stable at 81%.

Chart 2: Percentage of affordable housing completions by provider, England, 1991-92 to 2022-23

The data for this chart are available in Live Table 1013.

Historically, private registered providers had a higher share of the delivery (nearly all affordable housing delivery throughout the 1990s was through private registered providers). The 8,906 affordable homes delivered by local authorities (representing 14% of the overall affordable housing delivery) are the highest recorded number of local authority completions since 1991-92; however, this comparison should be interpreted with care because the number of units for which is not possible to identify the provider was higher prior to 2014-15 than it is currently.

3.3 Funding of new affordable housing completions

Delivery of affordable homes funded through s106 nil grant agreements [footnote 3] [footnote 4] accounted for 47% of all affordable homes delivered in 2022-23. This compares with 44% the previous a year and the same as in 2020-21. In part, this may be due to the impact of to the restrictions introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which limited construction work. The first completions of s106 (nil grant) were recorded in 2000-01 and nearly all homes funded through this process are new build properties. Prior to 2014-15, s106 (partial grant) units were not separately identified in the data and are captured within the numbers of grant funded units. Partial grant funding used to be much more prevalent but recently the vast majority of s106 funded units are nil grant.

Chart 3: Affordable housing completions by funding, England, 1991-92 to 2022-23

The data for this chart are available in Live Table 1000C.

The ‘other’ category includes all other sources of funding, including among others, use of Right to Buy receipts by local authorities and the Affordable Homes Guarantees scheme.

4. Regional delivery of new affordable housing

In 2022-23, London was the region with the highest delivery of new affordable housing, followed by the South East. While this is consistent with historical data, between 2017-18 and 2019-20 delivery was higher in the South East. Together, these 2 regions are main drivers in the trends in affordable housing completions. A full set of regional figures are included in Live Table 1008C.

Chart 4: Affordable housing completions by region, England, 1991-92 to 2022-23

The data for this chart are available in Live Table 1008C.

Trends by tenure present a more complex picture. On social rent, more than half (55%) of new social rent homes in 2022-23 were in just 3 regions - South East, West Midlands and South West. This has held since 2017-18. Between 1992-93 to 2017-18, London was the region with most social rent delivery, it has since reduced considerably the number of new social rent homes delivered. On affordable rent, both the South East and the East of England have delivered more homes than London since 2016-17 and 2017-18, respectively. In 2016-17, 2017-18, 2021-22 and this year, there were more affordable rent homes delivered in the North West than in London. This changes coincided with the Greater London Authority’s introduction of London affordable rent as a tenure in 2017-18. In 2022-23, the Greater London Authority delivered 4,300 new housing in this tenure.

Figures for regional and local authority completions of homes by tenure can be found in Live Tables 1006C to 1007dC.

In 2022-23, 50% of all local authority delivery was done by London boroughs (including the City of London), the highest value on record. However, this comparison should be interpreted with care because, as mentioned above, the number of units for which is not possible to identify the provider was higher prior to 2014-15 than it is currently.

The highest delivery of housing by non-registered providers since 2020-21 has been in the South East. In 2022-23, 18% of delivery by non-registered providers in the region, compared to 19% in the previous year and 21% in 2020-21.  Regional trends for private registered provider delivery more closely reflect overall delivery.

5. Delivery of affordable housing in rural-urban areas

Using DEFRA’s 2011 rural-urban classification for England, it is possible to present sub-national trends in rural and urban areas [footnote 5].

In 2022-23, 25,100 units were delivered in local authorities classified as rural [footnote 6] and 38,505 in those classified as urban [footnote 7]. This represents a 4% decrease in rural areas and a 16% increase in urban areas, likely in part to be a result of a 33% increase in affordable housing delivery in London. The category “Urban with Major Conurbation” to which all London boroughs belong, as well as local authorities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, had an increase of over 3,500 new affordable homes, an 18% increase.

Chart 5: Affordable housing completions by 2011 rural-urban classification, England, 1991-92 to 2022-23

In 2022-23, rural local authorities represented 39% of all completions, lower than the 44% in 2021-22. The proportion of completions in rural local authorities was historically around 30% of all completions, but it increased steadily from 2011-12 and between 2016-17 and 2021-22 varied between 42% and 45%.

5.1 Affordable housing delivery in populations of less than 3,000

The Local Authority Housing Statistics [footnote 8] also collects the number of new build and acquisitions in populations of less than 3,000.

In 2022-23, there were 4,841 new affordable homes in these areas, which accounted for 8% of all new affordable housing. This is an increase of 6% compared to 2021-22 but lower than a peak of 5,702 in 2018-19. As a percentage, delivery in populations of less than 3,000 has been 8% since 2020-21, lower than a peak of 12% in 2015-16.

6. New build homes and acquisitions

There were 58,027 new build affordable homes completed in 2022-23, the highest number on record (since 1991-92). These were supplemented by 3,948 acquisitions of existing homes not previously used for affordable housing and 1,630 homes where there is currently no information on whether they are new build or acquisitions.

The 58,027 new build affordable homes represent an increase of 0.2% on the existing stock of all 25.16m homes in England at 31 March 2022 [footnote 9]. This is similar to recent years, with the proportion varying between 0.1% and 0.2% throughout the available period (since 1991-92) [footnote 10].

Proportionally, of the 63,065 affordable homes delivered in 2021-22, 94% were new build and 6% were acquisitions (excluding unknowns). These proportions have changed considerably since the early 1990s, particularly after 2003-04. In 1992-93, 6 out of 10 new affordable homes were new build compared to more than 9 out of 10 in the latest year.

Chart 6: Percentage of affordable housing completions by new build and acquisitions, England, 1991-92 to 2022-23

Note: The chart excludes completed affordable units where build type was unknown.

The data for this graph are available in Live Table 1009.

7. Comparison with overall housing supply

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) also publishes an annual statistical release Housing supply: net additional dwellings which is the primary and most comprehensive measure of housing supply. The latest release was published on 29 November 2023.

The 63,065 affordable homes delivered in 2022-23, represented an estimated 27% of the total number of new additions to the housing stock (i.e. excluding demolitions). This proportion has varied considerably since 2006-07, with a peak of 40% in 2010-11 and a trough of 16% in 2015-16, but has been increasing year-on-year since 2015-16.

Chart 7: Affordable housing and all new housing additions, England, 2006-07 to 2022-23

The data for this chart are available in Live Table 1000 and Live Table 120.

The 58,027 represent 27% of all housing new build completions in 2022-23[footnote 11]. This is the highest percentage since 2014-15. Between 2018-19 and 2019-20, it varied between 24% and 25% of all housing new build completions.

8. Starts on site

Since 2015-16, the department has published live tables with starts on site [footnote 12] of affordable housing to provide a leading indicator of affordable supply. However, starts funded directly by local authorities or by planning agreements not reported via Homes England or the Greater London Authority only started being collected in 2016-17 and are collected on a voluntary basis. This means 2015-16 data does not include these data and subsequent years may still be under reporting it.

In 2021-22, First Homes [footnote 13] were introduced as a tenure and are reported either via Homes England or local authorities (through the Local Authority Housing Statistics data return)[footnote 14]. However, Homes England cannot provide information on starts of First Homes. Therefore, First Homes starts are undercounted in this release and accompanying tables. 

There were 71,046 starts on site in England in 2022-23, compared to 63,191 in the previous year, a 12% increase. This is also the highest number of starts since figures were recorded and it is likely that the end of the 2016-23 Affordable Homes Programme has contributed to this increase, as the end of 2023 was the deadline by which all homes funded through the programme must have started.

Chart 8: Affordable housing starts on site by tenure, England, 2016-17 to 2022-23

The data for this chart are available in Live Table 1000S.

Affordable rent and shared ownership continue to account for the largest number of starts where the tenure is known, but the number of starts of both tenures decreased compared to the previous year. In 2022-23, these 2 tenures accounted for 51% of new affordable housing starts, excluding unknowns, compared to 60% in the previous year and 85% in 2016-17. In part, this is due to the increase in the number of starts for social rent and London affordable rent. The increase in  the number of starts where tenure is unknown since 2019-20 is due to the introduction of units delivered via Strategic Partnerships [footnote 15]. These units will have their tenure confirmed at a later stage.

The number of social rent and London affordable rent units started in 2022-23 increased by 46% and 40% respectively compared to 2021-22 and in both instances are the highest for the 7 year period for which there is comparable data.

In 2022-23, the overall number of affordable starts for rent (37,266) increased by 19% compared to the previous year, while those for ownership decreased by 3%. Affordable housing starts for rent represented 52% of all starts in 2022-23, similar to the 50% in the previous year. However, these percentages need to be considered in the context of the 15% increase in units where the tenure is yet unknown (as per above). If unknown tenure is excluded, then affordable housing starts for rent represented 72% of all starts in 2022-23.

9. Changes to this release

We have included in this publication commentary on affordable housing and overall housing gross supply instead of in the Housing supply: net additional dwellings statistical release, as this year the order of publication changed.

In June 2023, alongside the revisions to the 2021-22 data, a new live table 1013  was introduced covering additional affordable homes by provider type at England level. This was done in response to user demand.

Following the introduction of First Homes, first covered in the 2021-22 statistical release, a new live table 1007dC is also included on new completions of First Homes. There is no equivalent table for starts, as we know that First Homes starts are undercounted as explained above. Further details are included in the technical notes.

9.1 Summary of Revisions

This release includes revisions to 2020-21 and 2021-22 data since these were last published in June 2023, with further details included in the technical notes:

  • There are five completions in 2020-21 that were previously marked as “LA Unknown” that are now assigned to Northampton. Due to a problem in the data provided to the department, the local authority name was not read correctly for the last update;

  • There are also changes in 2021-22 to correct for a processing error in the June 2023 revisions. In that data release, a number of starts and completions for Affordable Rent in 2021-22 were wrongly marked as new build when they should have been marked as acquisitions. The previous bulletin is unaffected;

  • Other revisions to the 2021-22 data since June 2023 are due to local authorities reviewing of their submitted 2021-22 LAHS data, as part of the new data submission for 2022-23 and subsequent data quality checks.

10. Tables and open data

See the live tables accompanying this release.

See the open data accompanying this release.

11. Technical notes

Please see the accompanying technical notes for further details.

12. Next release

The date of the next release is pre-announced on GOV.UK.

  1. Affordable homes for rent includes the following tenures: social rent, London affordable rent, affordable rent and intermediate rent. ↩

  2. Non-registered providers can only receive Homes England funding for shared ownership units, and only since 2018-19. However, a small proportion of social rent and affordable rent units funded by Homes England since 2020-21 had as lead organisation a non-registered provider, which at later date will be handed over to either a local authority or a private registered provider. These units have been classified as “unknown” provider and with “other” funding in Live Tables 1000S, 1000C, 1011S and 1011C. This impacts 42 starts and 111 completions of social rent and 375 starts and 762 completions of affordable rent for the three year period since 2020-21. ↩

  3. Please see the Housing statistics and English Housing Survey glossary for a definition. ↩

  4. Since 2017-18, details of s106 units for London reported by the Greater London Authority (GLA) are estimates based on the total number of nil grant homes recorded on projects within the GLAOps. ↩

  5. The local authorities created on 1 April 2019, 1 April 2020 and 1 April 2021 were classified based on the data available: Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole was classified as Urban with City and Town, while Dorset, West Suffolk, Somerset West and Taunton and East Suffolk were classified as Largely Rural (rural including hub towns 50-79%) and Buckinghamshire, North Northamptonshire and West Northamptonshire were classified as Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%). ↩

  6. For the purpose of this bulletin, “rural” includes the following 3 categories: Mainly Rural (rural including hub towns >=80%), Largely Rural (rural including hub towns 50-79%) and Urban with Significant Rural (rural including hub towns 26-49%). ↩

  7. For the purpose of this bulletin, “urban” includes the following 3 categories: Urban with City and Town, Urban with Minor Conurbation and Urban with Major Conurbation. ↩

  8. Variables i1a (new build) and i6a (acquisitions) in Section I of the data return. For years prior to 2011-10, this was collected combined in a variable that is named i1z in the LAHS historical open data. ↩

  9. DLUHC Live Table 104. ↩

  10.  Please see the ‘Summary of Revisions’ subsection and the technical notes for details of revisions on new build and acquisitions since the data was published in June 2023. ↩

  11. Live Table 1009 and Live Table 120. ↩

  12. It should be noted that starts on site are not planning applications. For further details, please see definition in the Housing statistics and English Housing Survey glossary. ↩

  13. Homes England started recording First Homes completions in 2021-22. However, these are reported as market units in the accompanying tables to their release, but are counted as affordable housing in this release. These units are part of a small phase 1 pilot being delivered by the Single Land Programme, the starts on site for which are also reported as market units. A phase 2 grant funded pilot is delivering 1,500 First Homes units via the First Homes Early Delivery Programme 2021-23. Both pilots are in advance of the delivery of First Homes via Planning Policy. Homes England cannot separately identify starts on site that are First Homes. ↩

  14. It is possible that some local authorities are providing information on Homes England funded First Homes starts via LAHS. As there is no risk of double counting, and helps understand better the bigger picture, we have left these in. We estimate that fewer than 100 First Homes starts reported in LAHS in 2022-23 were funded by Homes England. ↩

  15. Strategic partnerships were introduced in 2018 and work as long-term agreements between one or more housing associations and Homes England. Homes England’s funding of these units is based on a whole development programme rather than scheme-by-scheme. ↩

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