Manchester saw more homes built in the last year (4,766) than all the 32 Greater London boroughs combined (4,261) a report to the Council’s Communities and Equalities Scrutiny Committee heard today (Weds 22 July).
The significant achievement marks another record-breaking year as part of the Council’s ambitious housing strategy up to 2032, which also saw more affordable homes built than at any point since the late 1990s with 901 affordable tenure homes completed – of which around half (439) were for social rent.
Manchester is also bucking the national trend for affordable housing starts recording an increase of 12% since 2022/23.
And the city centre also saw the largest ever delivery of affordable in the city’s history over the last year with 259 completions, helping to diversify the city centre housing market and help more Manchester people have more choice about where they live.
The Housing Strategy update shows that the city remains on track to meet its target to deliver at least 36,000 homes of all tenures by 2032, including 10,000 social, Council and genuinely affordable homes – 3,000 of which will be in the city centre.
13,555 homes have already been delivered since 2022 with more than 7,800 currently under construction, and a further 20,000 homes with planning approval or in the pipeline.
In terms of affordable homes, there are 4,000 homes in the pipeline with around 1,450 under construction, 2,000 more with planning approval – and a further 690 awaiting a planning decision. 264 of the affordable homes completed were three-bed and larger, increasing access to larger family homes to help reduce overcrowding in the city.
A further aim of the strategy was to increase home ownership for Manchester people and following the Renters’ Rights legislation coming into effect on 1 May, data shows that some landlords are choosing to exit the private rental market. Two-thirds of these sales went to owner occupiers with an estimated increase of around 1,450 homeowners in the last year.
And half of the affordable homes built in 2025/26 were either low or zero carbon and Manchester has now raised its ambition to achieve 75% low-carbon affordable housing by 2032.
Cllr Gavin White, Manchester City Council’s executive member for housing and regeneration, said:
“We set out to be ambitious with how we are delivering new housing for our residents because we know how important a decent, secure and safe home is for the success of Manchester people.
“Building genuinely affordable homes remains incredibly challenging but we continue to buck the national trend and we are seeing more new affordable homes built now than at any point this century – and to have built the homes we have year-on-year is testament to our vision to deliver for our residents.
“We have done housing differently. We aren’t solely reliant on private developers to deliver social and affordable housing. We are ramping up delivery by working closely with our housing partners, by accessing grant funding and using Council-owned brownfield land to deliver the homes we need. And the results speak for themselves.”
