England to see £9bn of Additional Funding for Affordable Housing Thanks to New L&G Partnership Model
On April 27th 2026, Legal & General published a Whitepaper entitled “Delivering Affordable Housing Growth; a Partnership Approach for England” which laid out their solution for generating institutional capital for affordable housing.
This joint venture between housing associations and institutional investors, dubbed Partnership Registered Provider (Partnership RP), is designed to be a scalable mechanism to draw in greater levels of institutional investment. This would see housing associations sell homes to the joint venture and using the revenue from the sales to build new affordable homes.
This news has come at a critical time for housing in the UK. It is estimated by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) that the UK housing gap currently stands at a staggering 6.5 million homes. With only 446 homes per 1,000 people, Britain has the second worst housing rate in Europe. Ben Hopkinson, who is the Head of Housing and Infrastructure at the CPS has highlighted that “Failure to build more homes means British people, especially those in England, are being condemned to smaller, more expensive houses than our European neighbours”. L&G’s new Partnership RP could be an avenue towards a solution to this.
Analysis by L&G suggests that every 5 homes transferred into a Partnership RP has the potential to generate the capacity to produce 1 new home without any additional government funding. Should 35% of social housing owned by housing associations, which currently own circa 2.9 million homes in England, are transferred into Partnership RPs, up to 800,000 new affordable homes could be delivered in a decade.
Gareth Mee, the Chief Executive Officer for Institutional Retirement at L&G emphasised that “Investors like L&G are already helping to deliver social and affordable homes across the UK, and this model gives us – and other institutional investors – the ability to go further by putting long?term pension capital to work where it is needed most, while delivering returns for our investors”.
Last month, L&G announced a partnership with Hyde Group, putting principles of the Partnership PR into practice. This deal with Hyde Group, a housing association which owns and manages 125,000 homes, has seen this joint venture launch with an initial portfolio of more than 1,000 new homes comprised of social rent and shared ownership properties. Hyde has also confirmed that they have consulted with their residents regarding the transfer of ownership and confirmed that there will be no changes to tenancies or leases as a result of the deal.