Can Andy Burnham solve the UK's housing crisis?

ByBen Chu

Policy and Analysis correspondent, BBC Verify

Millions of people are facing unaffordable rents, long waits for social housing, or are priced out of the market when they are ready to buy.

The average house price in England was £300,000 last year - almost eight times average earnings.

The Labour government has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes in England over the course of this Parliament - but it is already falling behind on this target.

Andy Burnham is credited by some people with overseeing a building boom in Manchester as mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, although critics say there remain serious housing problems in the city region.

BBC Verify has looked at the scale of the housing challenge facing Burnham once he becomes PM, and examined whether there is anything we can learn from his record as mayor to see how he might tackle it.

Burnham has said , externalthe UK is in the grip of a "housing crisis" and he wants to deliver "the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period" - but has not provided details on exactly what this means.

Keir Starmer's government had already pledged £39bn, external to fund the construction of 300,000 new "social and affordable houses" over the course of 10 years during the 2025 Spending Review, and said this money would "reinvigorate" council housebuilding.

That would equate to around 30,000 new homes a year, but the majority of those were expected to be social housing built by not-for-profit housing associations using government grants.

Council house construction has collapsed across England since the 1980s and much of the stock of local authority homes has been sold off since then under the right-to-buy policy, external for tenants introduced by the Thatcher government of that era.

In the 1950s, councils were building almost 200,000 new council homes a year. In 2025 that figure was just 1,970 - and only around half of all councils, external now either own or build homes directly.

If Burnham intends for councils themselves to directly build all the new homes he has promised, they would be required to construct tens of thousands a year, when many have not built any for decades.

It would also probably require a considerable increase in council budgets, allowing them to rebuild their internal teams needed to plan, commission and manage large-scale housebuilding.

If, as some believe likely, Burnham's definition of "council housing" ultimately includes new social housing, external - delivered by housing associations and made available at social rents - this might be more achievable.

Social rents, external are typically around half of equivalent local market rents.

Labour pledged a major step up in overall housebuilding - covering private as well as social housing - when it took power in 2024, pledging to deliver a total of 1.5 million new homes in England over the course of a five-year parliament.

But that implied an average of 300,000 new dwellings each year, a rate of construction not seen in decades.

BBC Verify has been tracking the target using government statistics on the number of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC) issued by each local authority. Each newly created dwelling must have an EPC by law, making it the most timely indicator of new homes being built.

The latest EPC data suggests, external only 204,000 new homes were delivered in the 12 months to March this year, far short of the required annual building rate to hit Labour's target - and with only around three years remaining until the next general election to meet what was already a very stretching goal.

A BBC Verify tool enables people to see housing delivery in their own local authority area by entering their postcode.

Burnham's record on delivering new housing in the Greater Manchester city region - which encompasses boroughs from Wigan to Stockport - during his time as mayor was not extraordinary compared with other city regions in England.

There were 3.8 new homes built per 1,000 people between 2018 and 2025 - a lower rate than Cambridgeshire and Peterborough (5.6), the East Midlands (4.3), Greater London (4.2), and the West of England (4.2).

But the housing delivery rate in the city of Manchester itself during that time was more impressive. The city added 5.3 homes per 1,000 people, more than any other highly populated local authority area in England.

Burnham inherited a housing policy in Manchester's city centre that stemmed from a 1990s regeneration project encouraging private property developers to invest in the area.

Property developers in London have long been required to provide a considerable proportion of social rent housing on new projects. But in Manchester there was generally less emphasis on developers being required to do this.

In his 2024 mayoral manifesto, external, Burnham promised to deliver 10,000 new council homes across Greater Manchester by 2028.

But the number of council homes , externalacross the 10 boroughs of the city region fell slightly, from around 61,000 in 2016 to 59,000 in 2025, although the Greater Manchester Combined Authority has said national policy has been partly responsible for this record, particularly right-to-buy.

The delivery of new social rent housing increased , externalin Greater Manchester during his tenure, rising from 76 in 2017-18 to 633 in 2024-25, and rose faster than in other northern English city regions.

Analysts say the Starmer government's planning reforms for England - including changing the rules on green belt development to increase the area homes can be built on - should help increase construction in the long term.

But some argue that, in the immediate term, housing construction by private sector developers, external is being held back by high house prices relative to average household incomes and elevated mortgage interest rates, which make housing unaffordable to many prospective buyers.

The average house price in England, external was estimated at £300,000 in 2025, almost eight times the average annual earnings of a full-time employee.

Private housing developers have also cited factors such as a shortage of skilled labourers from Europe since Brexit and a jump in construction material costs in the wake of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as barriers to delivery.

Some argue government environmental and safety regulation, external is also holding back construction.

One option for Burnham to increase the supply of new social housing would be to prioritise the construction of homes for rent by councils and housing associations and direct the entire £39 billion, 10-year investment package towards that goal, rather than using part of it to subsidise the building of affordable homes for purchase.

But it's estimated that to deliver a major uplift in these forms of housing would require an extra £13bn , externalper year of state subsidy on top of the existing commitments.

Burnham also said in a speech on 29 June that "we will use public land, vacant public land, to reduce costs".

Housing analysts believe there is potential to use publicly owned land , externalto increase the delivery of housing, but some warn previous governments also attempted to do this without significant success and that there are inherent constraints which are challenging to overcome, such as the fact that the land might be part of a school's grounds or be too small and costly to develop.

Analysts argue that, though there is a case for higher state investment in council and social housing on a national scale, the UK still also needs a massive step-up in the construction of private housing - and that if Burnham is to have a chance of dealing with the housing crisis as prime minister he will need to deliver on the this front too.

Additional reporting by Daniel Wainwright