Legal & General plans to invest over £2bn (€2.3bn) of pension money into affordable UK homes over the next five years.
Legal & General’s Retirement Institutional (LGRI) business said it is planning to invest the additional capital to help create more than 10,000 new homes nationwide.
The investment – which is being made through the Legal & General Affordable Homes business – will help to ”tackle the shortage of affordable housing” that currently exists in England, it said.
LGRI made a first £100m funding commitment to affordable homes in 2020. Last year a further £270m was committed to investing in 1,400 new affordable homes across the UK, to be delivered by 2024.
The National Housing Federation and charity Crisis estimate that 145,000 new affordable homes need to be built every year to meet demand whilst barely a third of that figure (45,000) were delivered in 2020/21.
Andrew Kail, Legal & General Retirement Institutional CEO, said: “The UK has a huge shortage of affordable homes. Today’s announcement demonstrates how Legal & General Retirement Institutional, by putting inclusive capitalism at the centre of its investment focus, will help to address some of this problem.
“Legal & General is committed to building a better society for all by investing in useful and sustainable assets that will benefit both today’s society and future generations, whilst investing hard-earned pension savings and securing the pensions of thousands of scheme members.”
Ben Denton, Legal & General Affordable Homes CEO, said: “This is a great example of how Legal & General is making a significant difference to people’s lives and their communities by building new affordable homes and providing housing for those most in need.
“We are also working to maximise the number of low carbon homes we build and we have committed that all new affordable homes we develop will be Net Zero Carbon by 2030.
“There is still a massive need to deliver more affordable housing to help the 1.2 million households on the social housing register.”
As previously reported, LGRI is also planning to invest a further £2.5bn of pension money into UK build-to-rent projects over the next five years.
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