Angela Rayner insists 1.5m housing target can be met as extra £350m pledged for affordable homes
Angela Rayner has insisted the government can meet its target to build 1.5m homes over the next five years as ministers pledged an extra £350m for housebuilding.
An extra £300m has been injected to the affordable homes programme, a move ministers believe will allow 2,800 additional homes to be built.
More than half of these extra homes will be for social rent, the government has said, while more than 250 council homes are expected to be made available through a £50m boost to the local authority housing fund.
The scale of the challenge is stark, with more than 123,000 households in temporary accommodation – including nearly 160,000 children – while almost 6,000 families with children are in bed and breakfast accommodation.
Asked whether she was worried about whether the government could meet the 1.5m homes target, Ms Rayner said she was “determined” to meet the challenge.
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“We will meet that target because we can’t afford not to,” she told broadcasters.
“We have 1.3 million people waiting on housing waiting lists, there isn’t a person listening to this show that will not know somebody who is desperate to get on the housing ladder.
“So, therefore, we’re determined to turn that tide.”
And pressed on whether the expected 250 increase of council homes was a big enough increase to meet the need, Ms Rayner said: “We think the measures we’re taking will unlock thousands more council and social homes as part of that programme. We want to help councils who want to build those homes.
“We see 160,000 children in temporary accommodation, and the cost of that on local authorities is significant, as well as the impact on children’s life chances,” she said.
“So we need to build the homes, and we’re doing everything we can to turn the tide of decline and build the houses that people desperately need.”
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What are Labour’s housing plans?
The extra £350m promised comes on top of £500m that was earmarked for affordable housing in October’s budget.
According to housing charity Shelter, at least 90,000 social rent homes would need to be built each year for the next 10 years to clear most social housing waiting lists in England and to house every homeless household.
A report by MPs last month found that a record number of children are living in B&Bs beyond the legal limit as England’s homelessness crisis pushes councils to breaking point.
MPs on the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said there was a “dire need” for housing reform, with the lack of affordable homes forcing cash-strapped local authorities to haemorrhage their funds on temporary accommodation.
A recent Sky News investigation found that children in some parts of England were spending as long as five-and-a-half years on average in temporary accommodation.
The length of stay has increased significantly in many areas since 2021, with particularly long stays in London and the South East.
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Elsewhere, ministers are expected to set out plans to crack down on exploitative behaviour by rogue landlords who they say are costing the taxpayer by claiming uncapped housing benefit in return for providing homes that are unsuitable.
Last week the government announced that a law to force social landlords to investigate and fix hazards within a set timescale will be phased in from October.
The legislation is named after two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who died in December 2020 from a respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in the social home his family rented in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
Taiwanese lawmaker Ko Ju-Chun has called on the government to consider adding Bitcoin to its national reserves, suggesting it could serve as a hedge against global economic uncertainty.
Ko, a legislator at-large in Taiwan’s legislative body, the Legislative Yuan, took to X on Friday to report that he had advocated Bitcoin (BTC) investment by the Taiwanese government at the National Conference on May 9.
In his remarks, Ko cited Bitcoin’s potential to become a hedge amid global economic risks and urged Taiwan to recognize the cryptocurrency alongside gold and foreign exchange reserves to boost its financial resilience.
Ko’s announcement came shortly after the legislator held talks with Samson Mow, who advocates for Bitcoin adoption by states like El Salvador at his BTC tech firm Jan3.
Taiwan is an export-oriented economy
Ko highlighted that Taiwan is an export-driven economy that has experienced significant fluctuations in its national currency, the New Taiwan dollar, amid global inflation and intensifying geopolitical risks.
“We currently have a gold reserve of 423 metric tons, and our foreign exchange reserves amount to $577 billion, including investments in US Treasury bonds,” the lawmaker stated.
In a scenario of more intense currency volatility or potential regional conflicts, Taiwan may “very likely be unable to ensure the security and liquidity,” Ko continued, adding that Bitcoin could be a great addition to Taiwan’s reserves for several reasons.
“Bitcoin has been operating for over 15 years. It has a fixed total supply, is decentralized, and is resistant to censorship. Many countries are focusing on its hedging attributes. At the same time, in intense situations, it may not face the risk of embargo,” he said.
Bitcoin is not the only solution
Referring to many global initiatives considering Bitcoin adoption as a reserve asset, Ko stressed that he’s not advocating for Bitcoin as the “only solution” to rising economic challenges.
Instead, the legislator suggested adding a “small proportion of Bitcoin” into the diversified assets as tools for sovereign asset allocation and risk hedging, and backup capacity of Taiwan’s financial system.
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He previously suggested that Taiwan could allocate a maximum of 5% of its $50 billion reserve to Bitcoin in an X post on May 6.
“When exchange rate risk and regional uncertainty increase, it is time to introduce new tools to construct a more flexible financial strategy framework,” Ko said, adding:
“As former Dean Chen Chong said, Bitcoin is the gun of the digital era. It may also be the gold of the digital era, the silver of the digital era. Or it could be gunpowder. A wise nation will not let weapons be in others’ hands.”
The news comes as Taiwan is emerging as a crypto-friendly jurisdiction, with the Financial Supervisory Commission pushing institutional trials of crypto custody services in late 2024.
Mainland China continues to maintain its hostile stance on cryptocurrency after imposing a ban on multiple crypto activities, including mining, in 2021.
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German law enforcement seized 34 million euros ($38 million) in cryptocurrency from eXch, a cryptocurrency platform allegedly used to launder funds stolen after Bybit’s record-breaking $1.4 billion hack.
The seizure, announced on May 9 by Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and Frankfurt’s main prosecutor’s office, involved multiple crypto assets, including Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) and Dash (DASH). The move marks the third-largest crypto confiscation in the BKA’s history.
The authorities also seized eXch’s German server infrastructure with over eight terabytes of data and shut down the platform, the announcement added.
eXch exchanged crypto without AML
In the statement, the BKA described eXch as a “swapping” service that allowed users to exchange various crypto assets without implementing Anti-Money Laundering (AML) measures.
The platform had operated since 2014 and reportedly facilitated about $1.9 billion in crypto transfers, some of which were believed to be of “criminal origin,” including assets laundered during the Bybit hack.
“Among other things, a portion of the $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit crypto exchange, which was hacked on Feb. 21, 2025, is said to have been exchanged via eXch,” the authorities wrote.
Multisig, FixedFloat among laundering cases
According to a post by crypto sleuth ZachXBT, eXch was also involved in laundering millions of funds from other crypto thefts and exploits, including Multisig, FixedFloat and the $243 million Genesis creditor theft.
Those were in addition to “countless phishing drainer services over the past few years with refusal to block addresses and freeze orders,” ZachXBT said.
ZachXBT was among the first security analysts to report on eXch’s links to laundering $35 million of crypto assets stolen from Bybit soon after the hack was confirmed.
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“Lazarus Group transferred 5K ETH from the Bybit Hack to a new address and began laundering funds via eXch (a centralized mixer) and bridging funds to Bitcoin via Chainflip,” ZachXBT wrote in a Telegram post on Feb. 22.
eXch announced termination of services by May 1
After initially denying involvement in laundering funds from the Bybit hack, eXch eventually announced it would cease operations by May 1 in a Bitcoin Talk post published in mid-April.
“Even though we have been able to operate despite some failed attempts to shut down our infrastructure […], we don’t see any point in operating in a hostile environment where we are the target of SIGINT [Signals Intelligence] simply because some people misinterpret our goals,” it wrote.
Addressing the seizure, senior public prosecutor Benjamin Krause stressed the importance of action against “quick and anonymous opportunities for money laundering for any amount.”
“Crypto swapping is an essential component of the underground economy, used to conceal incriminated funds from illegal activities such as hacking or trading in stolen payment card data, thus making them available to perpetrators,” he said.
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