Housing supply (including affordable) across the UK

All-sector housing supply across the UK countries

Comparisons across the UK in housing supply can be made by financial year. Data for the financial year 2023-24 is not yet available.  However, our previous publications presented such comparisons up to 2022-23. Where, in 2022-23 in Scotland the completions rate increased to 43 homes per 10,000 people, England’s rate was 38 per 10,000 (net additions), Northern Ireland’s was 34 per 10,000 and Wales was 18 per 10,000. For a more detailed write up please refer to the December 2023 publication.

Affordable housing delivery across UK countries

Chart 11 below illustrates how affordable housing delivery figures per 10,000 population have varied on a financial year basis across the 2007-08 to 2022-23 period by UK country.

Across the 15 years between 2007-08 and 2022-23, the annual average delivery of affordable housing per head of population in Scotland has been 14.2 homes per 10,000 population, higher than Wales (8.2 homes per 10,000 population), England (9.8 homes per 10,000 population), and Northern Ireland (12.6 homes per 10,000 population – average across the years 2010-11 to 2022-23).

Scotland has had a higher rate of delivery than all other UK countries in each year but one from 2015/16 to 2022/23, with the rate dropping below the rate for Northern Ireland in the year 2020/21 following COVID-19 restrictions.

Chart 11: The 10,462 affordable homes delivered in Scotland in the latest financial year 2022/23 equates to a rate of 19.1 homes delivered per 10,000 population, compared to 11.4 in Northern Ireland, 11.3 in England and 10.6 in Wales

In addition to the differences in total affordable delivery between each country, there are also some differences in the delivery of different affordable housing products within the mix of overall affordable housing in each country. For example, in England in recent years there has been a greater delivery of affordable / intermediate rent compared to social rent. Therefore, when looking over the four years to 2022-23, in England there have been on average 4.6 affordable / intermediate rent homes delivered per 10,000 head of population and 1.3 social rented homes delivered 10,000 per-head of population. This compares to a rate of 2.1 for affordable rent homes and a rate of 12.4 for social rented homes in Scotland.

Note that the statistics for England and Wales both include developer-funded Section 106 supply, although for England it is thought that some will be missed as local authorities are not aware of it all. Northern Ireland does not currently have an equivalent mechanism. Data for Scotland include Section 75 units receiving some form of government funding. Data are not available to estimate the number of affordable homes delivered without central government funding in Scotland, but it is thought that the numbers of these homes may be relatively low based on current estimates of the number of funded Affordable and Section 75 homes being delivered.