The construction of new social housing for rent has fallen by 80% over the past decade, according to a new report from the Department of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
More than one million households are on the waiting list for public rental housing, and at current construction rates it will take 70 years to house everyone on the waiting list.
The London borough added just 777 homes as social rent between 2017 and 2018.
Shadow housing secretary John Healy said: “These figures confirm the catastrophic fall in the number of new homes affordable for social rent under the Conservative government.”
Community Housing Simul (CHC) blames austerity for the decline in housing construction.
In 2010, the Welsh Assembly spent £159m on the Welsh planning sector, but this figure fell to £77.4m in 2017-18.
Polly Neate, chief executive of the charity Shelter, said the disparity between those waiting for social housing and those whose construction was taking place to meet this demand was unacceptable.
“With nearly 280,000 people homeless in the UK today, this is completely unacceptable,” she said.
In her party conference speech last month, Prime Minister Theresa May said she would remove the cap on local authority borrowing to build new homes.
Commenting on the Prime Minister’s announcement, Lord Porter, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: “The Prime Minister’s speech today shows that the Government has listened to what we are saying that councils must be part of the solution to the chronic housing shortage. “
“It’s great that the Government has accepted our long-standing call to lift the housing borrowing cap. We look forward to building new affordable housing and infrastructure.”
“The national housing shortage is one of the most pressing problems we face and we can only solve the housing crisis by increasing the availability of all types of housing, including affordable and social rent housing. is clear.”
“The last time this country built homes on the scale that it needs today was in the 1970s, when councils built more than 40 per cent of homes,” he added.
