Budget to include £1bn for social and affordable housing

Key points

• The Budget will include over £1bn for social and affordable housing in England, pushing the 10-year homes programme past £40bn.
• Mayors and regional leaders will get greater powers and a £1.5bn borrowing facility from 2028.
• Chancellor John Healey faces calls to resign if he does not set out plans to spend 3% of GDP on defence by 2030.

More than £1bn for social and affordable housing in England will be provided in Wednesday's Budget, taking funding for the government's 10-year homes programme past £40bn. Mayors and regional leaders across England are also expected to receive greater powers and funding, with councils helped to borrow money from the government at preferential interest rates to invest in housebuilding.

Chancellor John Healey said English cities and regions would get the "right to decide their own future", while Prime Minister Andy Burnham said the plans were about shifting power to those "who know their communities best".

Funding for regional leaders

An initial £285m in transitional seed funding will be allocated next year to support mayors and local leaders and reduce reliance on "fragmented bidding pots" in Whitehall, the Treasury said. The government will also work with mayors to design a new £1.5bn borrowing facility from 2028 for local priorities such as new homes, high streets and transport links.

Areas not yet strategic authorities will be able to access a share of the £285m funding. Claire Ward, chairwoman of the UK Mayors Network, said increased devolution would help turn "ambitious plans into reality", while Lord Sadiq Khan, Labour's mayor of London, said greater investment ability could unlock infrastructure projects including the West London Orbital route and Bakerloo line extension.

Mayors and local leaders know what their communities need to grow, which is why we are giving them more money, more power and more capacity to get projects moving, build homes and make the right decisions for their areas.

— Chancellor John Healey

Defence spending and adviser resignation

The Sunday Times reported that Healey is expected to unveil billions of pounds of new defence spending in the Budget, with details to be outlined at next year's spending review. Shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith called for Healey to resign if he fails to set out how the UK will spend 3% of GDP on defence by 2030.

Healey's Budget preparations suffered a blow when Treasury entrepreneurship adviser Alex Depledge announced she was resigning, leaving on Thursday. She told the Sunday Times that start-ups were being treated as a "sideshow".