Developers wishing to build houses in Wiltshire will now be obligated to provide social housing instead of affordable homes, due to the revelation that affordable housing is, in fact, unaffordable.
During the planning permission application process, developers are required to ensure that a certain percentage of the houses are offered at rates below the market price.
Affordable houses are priced at 80 per cent of the market rate, while social houses are set at 60 per cent.
These properties can be made available to buy through shared ownership schemes – where individuals buy a portion of a home with a mortgage and pay rent for the remaining share – or for rent either via the council or a housing association.
Potential owners or tenants must be listed on the council's housing register to apply for one of these properties when it becomes available on the market.
Applicants need to have a household income of less than £80,000 to qualify – this is the income that the council estimates an individual or couple needs to access the housing associations.
At a meeting of Wiltshire Council's Cabinet, Adrian Foster, the portfolio holder for housing, pointed out that registered providers were unable to afford to purchase houses at the affordable rate to then let to tenants at the social rate.
"We have 5,500 people on our register and they can only afford social rents," he stated.
"From this point on, any planning applications that come to Wiltshire will have to include social rental houses, not affordable rental houses."
Meanwhile, seventeen houses built for affordable rent have remained unsold for this reason.
Earlier in February, Wiltshire Council revealed that over 500 new affordable homes were "in the pipeline," and the council set a goal to create 1,000 new affordable homes by 2030.
The council's own register of new housing developments indicates a handful of affordable homes are expected to hit the market between now and summer 2026 in various locations including Calne, Chippenham, Devizes, Malmesbury, Melksham – where developer Living Space is currently constructing a 100 per cent affordable development of 53 homes – Royal Wootton Bassett, Salisbury, Southern Wiltshire, Tidworth, Trowbridge, Warminster and Westbury.
These homes are a combination of shared ownership and affordable rent.
The only homes being offered at social rent are in Ludgershall, where 13 two-bedroom houses, 10 three-bedroom houses, and four two-bedroom flats are under construction.
Some towns, such as Marlborough, have no affordable housing in the pipeline. In this town, the local council is contemplating declaring a Housing Emergency.
In August, the average house price in Wiltshire was £333,000 according to the Office for National Statistics – an increase of 3.2 per cent from the previous year.
The average monthly rent, as reported by the ONS, was £1,032 in September 2025, a rise of 7.1 per cent compared to September 2024. Wiltshire experienced the highest rental increases in the South West in 2024-5.
