UK Housing Review tracks supply pressures

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UK Housing Review tracks supply pressures

New housing data sharpen the picture on Britain’s supply pressures. CIH’s latest UK Housing Review tracks falling social housing availability, rising private rent burdens, and the policy tension between replacement supply, new towns, and Right to Buy.

IN Brief:

  • The 2026 UK Housing Review adds fresh data on social housing losses, private rent pressure, and housing support costs.
  • The annual report also examines for-profit housing providers, housing and health, and the planned new towns programme in England.
  • For housing delivery, the document ties long-term stock erosion to current replacement pressures and future build programmes.

The Chartered Institute of Housing has published the 2026 UK Housing Review, its annual data-led assessment of housing conditions, policy, and delivery across the UK. Produced with the University of Glasgow, this year’s edition is free to download and combines commentary chapters with more than 200 charts and tables covering England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and English regional trends.

The strongest headline from this year’s edition is the long-run effect of Right to Buy. The Review states that 2.8 million homes had been sold across the UK by March 2025, generating £62bn in receipts, while the share of households living in social housing has fallen from 31% in 1981 to 17% today. Over the same period, total social housing stock fell from 6.8 million homes to 5.2 million.

The report also links stock loss to greater pressure in the private rented sector, where rents are now at their highest recorded share of earnings at 36.1%. Around 40% of homes sold through Right to Buy are now privately rented, adding another layer to the affordability and availability problem facing lower-income households and local authorities trying to manage waiting lists, homelessness pressures, and replacement supply.

Beyond tenure data, the Review includes chapters on for-profit housing providers, the role of housing in sustaining a healthy population, and the planned new towns programme in England. That gives the document a wider development relevance than a housing policy digest alone, because it places stock replacement, affordable delivery, and future settlement planning inside the same evidence base.

The full publication is available to download from the UK Housing Review page.

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