Only 208,600 net additional homes, including 64,762 affordable homes, were added to England’s housing stock during 2024-25, against the government’s target of 300,000 homes per year, the report noted. As of March 2025, 1.34 million households were on local authority housing waiting lists.
Richard Law-Deeks, chief executive of LGPS Central, said: “The UK needs more homes, particularly affordable and social housing.
“Long-term investors like the Local Government Pension Scheme can help, where opportunities meet the investment needs of our local authority pension fund clients.”
LGPS Central is the asset manager for 14 LGPS funds in central, eastern and southern England. Its member funds have collective assets of £100bn. As of March, 26% of its pooled assets were invested in the UK and 8% of assets were invested in property.
Last month, Inside Housing Living met CBRE Investment Management to talk about its new affordable housing provider. The US property giant’s affordable housing fund has allocated £700m of capital to date, mostly from LGPSs.
There are 24 investors in total, including some impact funds and a defined contribution pension scheme. Around 60% of the fund’s homes are social or affordable rent, 20% are discounted market rent and 20% are shared ownership.
In June, Oxfordshire’s LGPS, which has a total of £3.3bn in assets under management, backed investor Man Group’s Community Housing Fund, which aims to increase the availability of affordable homes in the UK. The £55m will go towards the building of affordable homes over the next few years. More than two-thirds of the investment will specifically go towards new homes in Oxfordshire, with the rest going to Man Group’s diversified national fund.
In February, the UK’s largest LGPS pool entered the suburban build-to-rent market in a £70m deal. Border to Coast Pensions Partnership announced it will forward-fund 139 single-family rental homes at Springstead Village in Cambridge.
