Social housing landlords in England are planning to invest record
amounts in repairs while also building new homes, according to
the 2026 financial forecasts
of private registered providers.
The data, published by the Regulator of Social Housing today (6
October 2026), indicates some anticipated stabilisation of the
sector's financial position, though also showed landlords were
facing significant financial pressures from the trade-off between
more and better social homes.
RSH Director of
Strategy Will Perry said it was encouraging to see landlords
preparing to invest record amounts in repairs while maintaining
their ambition to build more affordable homes.
He said: The sector's long-term ambition is clear: more
investment in existing homes, more new homes and more for social
rent. These are not easy trade-offs, and the financial pressures
need to be managed really carefully.
Our job is to make sure landlords are alert to the risks and have
the transparency, resilience and strategic focus needed to
navigate them while delivering for tenants.
This year's Financial Forecast Returns (FFR) data showed aggregate
interest cover over the first five years of plans comparable to
that in the last set of forecasts a metric which has previously
been declining in each successive year.
Key factors in this are a slowing in the rate of increase in
repairs and maintenance expenditure combined with increased
income growth.
There has been a modest increase in development plans over the
first five years, reversing the trend seen in recent forecasts.
A more substantial increase is seen over the ten-year term of the
Social and Affordable Homes Programme (SAHP), reflecting
bids for grant that were being made at the time the plans were
submitted.
To fund these plans, there is a greater increase in debt than has
been seen in recent years with £54.7bn of new borrowing required
over the first five years of plans and additional grant of
£16.3bn forecast over the same period.
There remains substantial variation within sector with the
largest providers (with over 40,000 homes) generally having a
tighter financial position.
Landlords' financial plans were prepared in early 2026 so do not
fully reflect the financial impact of ongoing global events,
consequential changes to inflation and interest rates, or
outcomes of SAHP bid
submissions all of which are likely to influence the next set of
submissions.
ENDS
Notes for editors
- The FFR data
was previously published with the Global Accounts,
released in January. This year RSH has produced it as a
standalone report to ensure the information is available to
stakeholders as early as possible.
- The publication gives an overview of the financial forecasts
submitted by providers managing or owning 1,000 or more homes.
- Both the report and an accompanying dataset giving aggregated
data for the sector as a whole and subsets of providers are
available on the website. This is the first time that we have
published the aggregate financial forecasts dataset.
- The report and dataset do not include information relating to
the 2025/26 financial year. This will be published as the Global
Accounts' in January 2027.
