Benefits to bricks: The balance between benefit spending and investment

More than £30bn of public money is spent on housing every year. But in 2024 this is mostly on housing benefits, personal subsidies and on measures that stoke housing demand without boosting supply.

Rebalancing spending from demand-side subsidies to public capital investment to increase social housing supply is not straightforward, but it is necessary to tackle the growing housing emergency in the UK.

Prof Ken Gibb's latest policy paper (https://housingevidence.ac.uk/publica...) examines the long-term shift from the 1970s when most housing spend was on bricks and mortar. It also considers how the next UK government could start to redress the balance and invest in a new generation of social housing.

Delivering new social homes at scale would drive economic growth, create jobs, and boost health and well-being across all UK regions.

Join Prof Ken Gibb (UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence), Ian McDermott (Peabody), Lynsey Sweeney (Communities That Work), Michael McLaughlin (HACT), and Rachael Williamson (Chartered Insitute for Housing) for a wide-ranging discussion on what policy levers and interventions could help us achieve the right balance between benefit spending and investment.