Why AI must power the next wave of Social Housing delivery

Andrew Lloyd , Managing Director at Search Acumen, says:

For years, national housing policy has wrestled with the tension between aspiration and delivery. Targets have been set and missed; waiting lists have grown longer, and the most vulnerable people in our society have been left with fewer safe, affordable places to call home.

The Labour government has made its priorities clear: £39 billion has been committed to its Social and Affordable Homes programme, with the goal of building at scale and speed. That is the right ambition, but against the backdrop of economic constraint, diminishing local authority resources, and a legal sector that has consolidated significantly in recent years, with fewer but larger firms now carrying heavier caseloads, there is only one way to  get the keys to new homes into people’s hands at pace: with the help of technology.

As a property data and technology provider, we have worked with real estate lawyers and conveyancers for many years, and one truth is undeniable: without AI-driven solutions, the government’s housing ambitions will not be realised.

Our latest research shows that for every new affordable home built in England this year, twelve more people of working age have become economically inactive, many of whom will rely most on affordable or social housing.

That 12-to-1 ratio points to a shortfall of nearly 300,000 homes in 2024 alone. Build starts on affordable homes have fallen by 40% to the lowest level since records began, and planning permissions for major residential developments have collapsed by almost the same margin compared with peaks in 2016.

The picture is clear: the demand for housing is accelerating, while the legal and transactional machinery required to get homes built and occupied is moving at a crawl.

If the government’s ambitious £39bn Social and Affordable Homes programme is to deliver results within this parliament, the sector must face reality. The only way to meet targets is by embedding technology at the heart of how we plan, transact, and deliver housing at scale and nowhere is this more urgent than in the legal processes underpinning social housing.

Why legal processes are the hidden bottleneck

The housing crisis is not only a question of bricks and mortar, even when construction funding and political will align, but the legal mechanics behind social housing transactions also remain stubbornly cumbersome.

Our work with housing lawyers shows that these deals can take almost three times longer to complete than transactions in the private sector. The reasons are obvious to anyone working in the field: vast portfolios, sprawling sites, multiple stakeholders, tight deadlines, and relentless cost pressures. The complexity of the transaction means each step requires significant manual due diligence, creating fertile ground for human error and costly delays.

At the same time, the legal profession itself is under pressure. Search Acumen’s Conveyancing Market Tracker shows the number of active law firms has fallen by 12% over the last decade, while average caseloads have risen by 21%. In other words, there are fewer lawyers doing more work, and often for slimmer margins.

It’s no surprise that HM Land Registry has reported that over half of the one million requisitions it issued in 2022 were due to avoidable errors. This points to an overstretched workforce. Without intervention, these cracks could easily derail the government’s housing programme.

How AI is already transforming property law

The encouraging part is that the solutions are not theoretical, they are already here and already changing how property lawyers work. I’ve seen first-hand how AI can take the sting out of the most repetitive parts of the job. Our local authority document reading tool REI, within our wider platform, is proving that, when trained on the right data, machines can process local authority information with speed, accuracy and consistency that no human team could match.

Since it launched late last year, firms using REI have shaved thousands of hours off their caseloads by letting AI shoulder the burden of reviewing search reports. In just a few months, more than 3,000 local authority reports have been processed at roughly four-fifths the time it would take manually. That isn’t a marginal gain, it’s a wholesale shift in what lawyers are able to achieve with the same resources.

Put bluntly, the firms that embrace these tools will be the ones that can keep pace with the social housing boom that is coming.

Why the private sector must move faster than government digitisation

Of course, some will point to HM Land Registry’s digitisation programme as the long-term answer. While these efforts are welcome, the reality is that the private sector is already moving faster.

If the government wants to show tangible progress before the next election, it cannot afford to wait for public systems alone to deliver. Private innovation and public digitisation must run in parallel.

History reminds us that the post-war housing boom was not achieved by government action alone but through coordination across public, private, and legal spheres. Today, AI represents the same kind of catalyst for systemic change.

An inflection point for social housing

The pressures on the social housing system are no longer isolated, they are converging in a way that creates both risk and opportunity. We have lost a million social homes since the late 1970s, and waiting lists already stretch to 1.33 million households. If the pace of building doesn’t change, that figure could easily climb to 2 million within the next decade.

Our data analysis shows that affordable housing build starts fell by 40% in 2024, the steepest drop in a decade, while planning permissions granted for major residential developments that include social and affordable tenures have declined by nearly half in the same period. Large scale developments are not being built for a multitude of reasons that the government is trying desperately to overcome, from commercial viability to the ongoing planning crisis. Add to that the reality that local authority budgets have slashed by nearly 60% since 2010, alongside a conveyancing profession that has fewer active firms than it did ten years ago, and you begin to see the full picture: demand rising, capacity falling.

And yet, this is also the moment where the political will is strongest. Labour has staked its credibility on delivering housing within a single term, with £39bn a transformation investment compared to the previous £11.8 billion five-year programme. That kind of ambition creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity, but it will only be realised if the sector can adapt.

By early 2026, I expect the tap to be turned on: housing associations, local authorities and registered providers will start to bring projects to market at speed. The legal market must be ready to absorb that surge. Those who have prepared, who have invested in AI and reshaped their processes will be able to manage caseloads efficiently and profitably. Those who haven’t may simply be left behind.

What lawyers should do now

This is the moment for real estate lawyers to make a choice. Firms that cling to manual processes will find themselves drowning in caseloads, unable to compete at tenders, and losing ground to rivals who can move faster and with greater accuracy.

The competitive edge will belong to those who embed AI at the heart of their practice. Automating the review of local authority searches and planning documents, reducing the risk of errors in HMLR submissions, and scaling up to meet the surge in social housing transactions without ballooning costs, these are not futuristic ambitions – they are the very real advantages already available to firms willing to act.

In my view, the choice could not be clearer: adapt now, or risk being overtaken by more agile competitors who understand that the future of housing law will be written with AI as its co-author.

A call for policy action

We know the private and public sectors must work together, with cross-collaboration already in action. It is great to see the digitalisation of our Land Registry really start to move at speed this past year, with further enhancements made to DRS during the second half of 2024. With the right investment, local authorities can make their own strides, too, using industry partners and tech companies to co-design solutions and implement digital processes.

One way to support broader technology adoption could be to give law firms that embrace AI a clear advantage when tendering for public sector work. Transactions are too complex, timelines too tight, and errors too costly for innovation to be optional. By treating AI as mission-critical infrastructure, councils and government can finally play catch up, whilst putting the needs of people first through delivery of much needed housing for the country’s most vulnerable.

From enlightenment to execution

Here, AI isn’t just about efficiency or gaining a competitive edge, it’s about tackling a long-standing societal problem buried under outdated systems, red tape, and endless administration. The property transaction process is widely seen as archaic, with century-old laws no longer fit for today’s world. To truly give people a safe place to call home within a meaningful timeframe, we must harness British ingenuity, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit.

The housing crisis is one of the greatest challenges facing this government. Meeting it will require not just money and political will, but a smarter, faster way of working. If we equip our legal teams with the right tools, we stand a chance of closing the gap. If not, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past: ambitious targets set, but never met.

Now is the time to act. Technology won’t build houses, but it will make sure the legal processes behind them don’t stand in the way.