According to data published by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, in 2019 there were 1,159,833 households on local authorities’ housing waiting lists.
Outside London, the North East is the region most affected, with areas such as Liverpool and Oldham seeing a worsening of the problem by 12% and 16% respectively compared to 2018.
The people affected are low-income households who are eligible for accommodation provided by councils or homes managed by housing associations
The provision of social housing, which began in the late 19th century, took off after World War One and then expanded through succeeding decades, reaching a peak in the late 1960s.
In the 1980s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher changed the policy towards social housing and allowed council homes to be sold to tenants at a discount under the “Right to Buy” policy.
As a direct result 1.9 million households living in social housing bought their home
However, no firm policy was established to replenish this stock and there was a massive drop in new social housing builds from the 1977 peak of more than 140,000 in a single year
In 2018-19 only 37,800 new units of social housing were built in England and overall the stock of social housing has declined over 40 years by two million homes.