Social housing providers in Northern Ireland have welcomed a further £24m investment as they aim to build more than 2,000 new homes a year.
It has said that while it welcomes a further £24m to the social housing development programme budget from the NI Executive in the autumn monitoring allocation, this is still below the level needed to tackle large waiting lists. Read more: NI’s winter preparedness plan ‘too little too late’ to tackle tough season ahead
“The delivery of new social housing has been led by housing associations, who have been providing the match funding each year to build almost 2000 new homes, and have proven that this is the best model for delivery. The fact is that the budget allocation to the Social Housing Development Programme needs to be increased - we simply are not being given enough NI Executive funding to build the number of social homes we need.
"While this additional investment is positive, waiting for in-year allocations for capital works projects is not a sustainable way of tackling housing. We also need to see exactly how the additional funding for NI Water can be strategically invested to support housing new build.