r/LabourUK

At the heart of his proposals is the biggest council housebuilding programme since the post-war period, which he hopes will end Britain’s dependence on private landlords.

Housing trap

“The country is in a housing trap,” he said. “We are forced to chase rents in the private rented sector through the benefit system.”

Burnham added that Britain had lost almost 1.5 million council homes since the 1980s, while around the same number of people are now on housing waiting lists.

He argued that attempts to control housing costs by freezing Local Housing Allowance “makes families homeless” and places “unfunded pressures on councils when they have to pay for temporary accommodation”.

“Britain’s housing crisis is having a ruinous impact on its public finances,” he said and promised to use “public land, vacant public land, to reduce costs”.

The programme would be delivered through devolved regions and local leaders rather than Whitehall, as Burnham believes local areas are best placed to drive housing delivery, regeneration and economic growth.

Burnham also pledged to bring “higher density residential development to our towns”, helping to increase footfall on high streets while protecting more green space from development.

Housing should be at the centre of Government policy, he argued and that “everything starts with a good home.

“If you don’t give people a good home, what chance have they got of having a good life?

“This country finally has to put that at the top of its priority list.”

Burnham has not yet, however, revealed how the council housebuilding programme would be funded.

The majority of the public support laws that would ban or restrict access to social media for those under 18.

• 2 in 3 British adults (69%) support a law that requires social media companies to use age-verification tools to ban children under the age of 16 from accessing their platforms in the UK, broadly stable since January 2026 (-3ppts);
• A majority (61%) supports a social media curfew / usage restriction for 16- and 17-year-olds;
• Support remains high amongst 18-34-year-olds, with 67% supporting a ban for under 16s, though it increases with age (75% among 55-75s) and 58% supporting hour restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds, and again this is higher among 55-75s (66%).

Support depends on impact to the wider public

Support softens when the public are asked to also consider implications for the wider public. 

• Support dips to just under half (48%) if the law necessitates a total ban on Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) within the UK to prevent circumvention.
• Requiring all Britons to upload an ID or credit card reduces support to 1 in 2, regardless of whether the identification data would be held by individual platforms (50%) or device owners such as Apple or Android/Google (51%).
• Support for a law requiring age verification to ban under 16s from social media increases to 80% if it prevents under-18s from engaging with AI 'romantic' or roleplay chatbots, and 72% would support it if it meant that under 17s could no longer livestream or chat with strangers on platforms such as Roblox.