A new cross-departmental plan which aims to deliver 100,000 affordable and sustainable homes in Northern Ireland has been unveiled by Communities Minister Gordon Lyons.

The Housing Supply Strategy was set out at the Assembly and contains a number of ambitions, including increasing housing supply across all tenures, reducing homelessness and improving housing quality.

Minister Lyons said: "I am pleased to have the support of Executive colleagues to work together in new and innovative ways to deliver the supply of good quality, affordable and sustainable homes that we need in Northern Ireland.

"My ambition is to create a housing system that can deliver at least 100,000 homes - and more if needed. One third of these will be social homes, alongside an increased supply of intermediate homes delivered throughout the strategy lifetime."

He continued: "This strategy goes beyond bricks and mortar, and looks at wider areas such as energy efficiency – making sure energy costs remain affordable and manageable for everyone.

-- Advertisement --

"I will also launch a consultation on the Fuel Poverty Strategy shortly to address an issue which affects too many households across our community."

The Housing Supply Strategy has been endorsed by organisations across the sector, including: Chartered Institute of Housing Northern Ireland; Homeless Connect; Construction Employers Federation; The Northern Ireland Housing Executive; and Northern Ireland Federation of Housing Association.

The Minister added: "I am pleased there is a recognition of the collective effort required to address these issues, across the Executive but also from a range of organisations throughout the sector.

"All involved appreciate the enormity of the task in front of us, and the need for both investment and transformative action. Yet in harnessing the collective will, and setting out the next steps, we are moving in the right direction."

Construction Employers Federation Chief Executive, Mark Spence, welcomed the NI Executive's Housing Supply Strategy.

He said: "Against a backdrop of a 60–year low of housing completions in 2023, it is critical that the NI Executive takes urgent steps to deal with our housing crisis and the barriers to homebuilding.

"It is vital that the Executive now puts its full weight behind the Strategy. In particular this must mean sustainably addressing the decades of underfunding in our water and wastewater system which is holding up housing and economic development across Northern Ireland and is, as far as we are concerned, the greatest economic, social and environmental challenge of our time."

He continued: "We therefore again reiterate our view, and that of the NI Audit Office from their report in March 2024 that, as the Executive moves towards consulting on how it will spend its 2025/26 Budget, they must a establish a 'comprehensive review of alternative arrangements, led by suitably qualified experts' of how NI Water is funded given how crucial that investment is to wider economic activity such as homebuilding."