Social housing lists ‘would take 119 years to clear at current building rate’

Research shows generations of children in England will grow up homeless unless government addresses council housing debt, charity says

It would take more than a century to clear the social housing waiting lists in England at the government’s current speed of delivering new social homes, research by Shelter has shown.

The housing charity found that more than 1.3m households are on a waiting list for a social home, but only 12,198 were built by councils, housing associations or private developers across England last year. This equates to an average of 110 households waiting for every new social home delivered, and it would take 119 years to clear the waiting lists if building continued at the same rate.