Labour's flagship £10bn council housebuilding drive has been branded a "con" after figures obtained by The Independent showed that only 4 per cent of the homes it funds will actually be built and owned by local councils. Of 33 organisations awarded funding under the first wave of the £39bn Social and Affordable Housing Programme, just three – Cambridge, Newcastle and Eastleigh councils – are local authorities, with the vast majority of homes instead being delivered by housing associations such as Clarion, Orbit and Places for People, which will retain legal ownership. The findings undercut prime minister Andy Burnham's framing of the announcement as a "historic council housebuilding comeback", drawing sharp criticism from opposition parties about the true scale of the initiative.

Analysis shows councils are set to build roughly 2,811 of the 73,600 homes planned, about 3.82 per cent, with the three named authorities receiving £392.2m of the £9.58bn allocated. Shadow housing secretary James Cleverly called the scheme "a con", noting homes need not be delivered until 2039 and that funding has been backloaded beyond the Spending Review period, while the Liberal Democrats accused Burnham of "dressing up" the funding as a council housing renaissance. The article notes that around 90 per cent of local authorities are legally or financially barred from building housing stock, partly due to £31.8bn in historic housing debt costing councils roughly £1bn annually in interest, and that councils built just 2,200 homes a year on average in the five years to 2025, far below the postwar peak of 103,000 a year.