The government is set to subsidise private landlords by over £70bn by providing them housing support over the coming five years, according to analysis from the New Economics Foundation (NEF).
According to the think tank, the government is set to provide PRS landlords with £73bn in housing allowance in the five-year period between 2024/25 to 2028/29 — six times what the government is expected to have spent on affordable housing between 2021 and 2026.
the NEF analysed data from the Department for Work and Pensions in finding the government PRS subsidy plans.
Alex Diner, senior researcher at the NEF, commented: “Everybody should have an affordable, warm and secure home to live in, yet the government is spending billions subsidising a broken system which too often fails to deliver this.
“It is extremely inefficient for the government to be paying this money to private landlords when it should be building more new genuinely affordable homes and improving the quality and security of tenure for the homes we already have.
“To overcome this mess, the government must build more social homes to meet the rising demand for affordable housing, reverse its U?turn to loosen energy efficiency standards in the PRS and improve its plans to regulate private renting.”
