The Affordable Homes Programme is administered on behalf of the Government by Homes England (previously the Homes and Communities Agency). Providers (including housing associations) are required to bid for grant funding, successful bidders enter into delivery agreements with Homes England. Homes England published a new strategic plan on 30 October 2018: Homes England strategic plan 2018 to 2023. The 2010 Spending Review announced that £4.5 billion would be made available to fund new affordable homes over the period of the Review. This represented a reduction in grant funding from £8.4 billion in the previous Spending Review. Around £2bn of the £4.5 billion had already been committed to plans developed under the previous (Labour) Government’s National Affordable Homes Programme (NAHP): Despite the fiscal constraints, the Government is still investing nearly £6.5 billion of taxpayers’ money in housing, with £4.5 billion to fund new affordable homes over the Spending Review period. As part of this investment we intend to provide £200m so that the Mortgage Rescue scheme can stay open to support vulnerable homeowners threatened with repossession and £100 million to bring empty homes back into use.

The 2010 Spending Review also saw the Coalition Government announce an intention to introduce a new “intermediate rent” tenure (now referred to as affordable rent). Under this model housing associations can offer tenancies at rents of up to 80% of market rent levels within the local area. The additional finance raised is available for reinvestment in the development of new social housing. Essentially, this model involves the replacement of the capital grant supply subsidy for social housing with a revenue subsidy. The scheme was expected to contribute to the delivery of 150,000 new affordable homes over 2011-15. After a successful bidding process, the Government increased this estimate to 170,000 new homes (of which it expected that 80,000 would be affordable rent and affordable home ownership properties) utilizing £1.8 million in grant funding. The overall target was met with 82,115 completions of which 70% were affordable rent properties. There was a significant reduction in the number of new homes built for social rent.