By Triya Maicha, Partner and Head of Real Estate & Projects, Devonshires

The National Housing Federation’s call for the chancellor to bring forward funding under the £39 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme is a welcome and timely intervention.  It comes at a moment when demand from providers has run well ahead of the funding available in the programme’s early years, and points to something the sector has wanted for a long time: a serious, long-term commitment to social and affordable housing.  The question now is whether we can convert that commitment into delivery at the scale the country needs.

Bringing funding forward matters.  Earlier access to grant lets providers unlock stalled pipelines, bring schemes out of viability limbo, and respond more quickly to acute housing need. The federation’s point is a practical one: with the programme heavily oversubscribed, providers have shown the ambition and capacity to build now, and the profile of the funding shouldn’t be what holds them back. Bringing it forward would, as the federation puts it, turn that capacity into starts on site.  After a period in which affordable housing starts fell sharply, momentum of this kind isn’t a luxury.

Acceleration on its own won’t deliver 300,000 homes.  Two things will: the consistency of the funding approach; and the confidence it gives the capital markets. Both deserve more attention than they usually receive.

The real prize in this programme is not the headline figure but its 10-year horizon. I’ve been in the sector for two decades and for the first time in living memory, providers can plan against a decade of certainty rather than a series of short, stop-start windows. That certainty is valuable and worth protecting. It depends on funding rules, bidding routes and grant rates that hold steady long enough for providers to build delivery teams, commit land and enter contracts that run for years. The more stable that framework remains, the more confidently providers can plan and invest against it.  Stability of approach is, in itself, one of the most powerful tools government has to encourage ambition.

“The real prize in this programme isn’t the headline figure but its 10-year horizon. I’ve been in the sector for two decades and for the first time in living memory, providers can plan against a decade of certainty”

Confidence is where institutional capital comes in, and this is the point too often missed. The grant programme is substantial, but it cannot meet the need alone. Pension funds, insurers and other long-term investors hold exactly the patient capital affordable housing requires, and are actively looking for places to deploy it. What they need is predictability: stable, index-linked income they can model with confidence over decades, set within a policy environment they can rely on. The 10-year rent settlement at CPI + 1% was a significant step towards exactly that, giving investors clear visibility on cash flows that’s long been the missing piece.

Many believe that grant and private capital aren’t alternatives, but work best in tandem. Consistent, transparent government funding does more than build homes directly – it de-risks the wider market, signals that affordable housing is a durable national priority, and gives institutional investors the assurance they need to commit at scale. It also offers a measure of economic stability, sustaining construction activity and investment through weaker points in the cycle. Where grant and other government stimulus, including the National Housing Bank, lead with confidence, private capital follows. The clearer and steadier the public approach, the more readily that long-term capital comes forward.

If acceleration is matched with steady progress on planning, procurement, skills upgrades and supply chain capacity, the conditions for transformational delivery are within reach.  Providers and investors are ready to play their full part.  Bringing funding forward, and maintaining a steady, transparent approach over the life of the new programme, is among the most powerful things government can do to draw in the institutional capital this country’s housing need demands.  Get that right, and a decade of funding becomes a decade of genuine renewal.