The Chancellor has made his spending review speech to the House of Commons today (Wednesday 27th October)

He has pledged to build 180,000 affordable houses.  £1.8 billion will go towards building homes on derelict or unused land in England as part of the government’s £24bn housing package.

Under the plans, 160,000 greener homes will be built on brownfield land, with combined authorities and councils receiving £300 million to develop smaller brownfield sites for housing.

Sunak said: “We’re investing more in housing and homeownership too, with a multi-year housing settlement totalling nearly £24 billion: £11.5 billion to build up to 180,000 new affordable homes, and we’re investing an extra £1.8 billion, enough to bring 1,500 hectares of brownfield land into use, meet our commitment to invest £10 billion in new housing and unlock a million new homes.”

iHowz comment – this is not the first time Government have promised to build more housing.  In fact they added legislation in the 2016 Housing and Planning Act making it a legal obligation to build more – and didn’t

He also announced  that the government would provide an extra £2.2 billion for courts, prisons and probation services, including £500 million to ‘reduce the courts backlog’. Some of the money will also be allocated to victims’ services and ‘improve responses to rape cases’, Sunak said.

lack of joined-up thinking

But the Criminal Bar Association said the budget ‘once again exposes a lack of joined-up thinking’ towards the justice system and said victims of crime would continue to face an ‘interminable’ wait for justice ‘until substantial sums are reinjected to pay properly for the criminal advocates being forced to leave practice in droves through government inaction’.

CBA chair Jo Sidhu QC said there is ‘little sense putting aside headline-grabbing sums on important initiatives to tackle rape and violence against women, or repeating a commitment to the largest capital spend on prisons in a generation, when there is only short-term funding’ for the courts, ‘the engine room of the system’. 

Universal Credit Claw Back is to be reduced to 55% from 63%.