Homes England's 2025-26 completions hit a six-year high. Four in five are affordable homes.
Homes England delivered 40,332 completions in 2025-26, up 9%, with 80% affordable. For housing associations absorbing this volume, handover processes face their biggest test in years.
Homes England published its 2025-26 annual housebuilding statistics on 25 June 2026, showing 40,332 new homes completed under its programmes in the year to March 2026: the highest figure since 2020 and a 9% increase on the previous year. Four in five of those completions were affordable homes, meaning 32,243 units transferred to registered providers across England in a single financial year.
What happened
The figures cover homes delivered through Homes England's programmes during the 2025-26 financial year. Completions rose 9% year-on-year to 40,332; new starts increased 11% to 42,433. The affordable housing component reached 32,243 completed units, up 14% on the prior year and representing 80% of all programme completions.
The Shared Ownership and Affordable Homes Programme (SOAHP) 2016-21 formally closed in March 2026, having delivered 135,331 affordable homes across its lifetime. Its successor, the Social and Affordable Homes Programme 2026-2036, is now open to bids and represents the government's next phase of affordable housing investment.
The 14% year-on-year rise in affordable completions comes against the backdrop of the National Housing Bank's first active year, with its Gamston (Nottingham) scheme already under way and further sites in the pipeline.
Why it matters for developers
32,243 affordable homes changing hands in a single year is a significant logistics challenge for the registered providers absorbing them. Each unit transfers with a set of obligations that begin on the day of handover: a defect liability period, structural warranty cover, an EPC certificate, a Homeowner User Guide, and (from October 2025) a live set of Awaab's Law repair timescales covering damp and mould, with seven further hazard categories added in October 2026.
Under the Regulator of Social Housing's Consumer Standards, registered providers must maintain accurate, accessible records of their portfolio. Under Awaab's Law, the clock on statutory repair timescales starts from the moment a hazard is reported, not from when the housing association has located the handover documentation. A clean, dated, plot-level record from the developer is the foundation of that compliance chain.
A 14% volume increase in a single year does not come with a proportional increase in the time available to verify that each handover package is complete. When multiple schemes are completing simultaneously across different developers, the risk is that gaps in one handover only become visible when a tenant reports a repair and the HA needs to trace back to the original inspection record.
What to watch
The successor Social and Affordable Homes Programme runs to 2036 and is designed to accelerate affordable delivery beyond current rates. If affordable completions continue on their recent trajectory, housing associations will be absorbing more new-build units each year than at any point in recent history. The DLP periods, structural warranty cover, and Awaab's Law obligations on those homes all run concurrently, each from a different start date per plot. Developers and housing associations negotiating section 106 and grant-funded schemes now should be specifying what a complete handover record looks like before the first unit is occupied, not after.
How Guided Home helps
When a housing association is taking on new-build homes at volume, the compliance record starts at handover. Guided Home's inspections and defects platform gives registered providers a structured, plot-level record of unit condition from first inspection through the defect liability period, with every defect logged, dated, and traceable. When a tenant reports a repair, the handover record is already there.
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