The leaders of two tenant activist groups have given a distinctly luke-warm welcome to the Spring Statement.

The director of the Renters Reform Coalition – Tom Darling, tweeting on X from his personal account – commented that while it was “great” that the government says it’s boosting housing reply, he draws attention to a statement in the independent Office for Budget Responsibility’s report accompanying the Spring Statement. 

This says that it expects over the long term a 0.5% increase to the UK’s housing stock as a result of planning reforms introduced by the government, and that this would reduce the average house price by around 0.8% by 2029.

Darling tweets that this is “not exactly a game-changer for aspiring first time buyers.”

And Ben Twomey, chief executive of Generation Rent, uses his personal X account to retweet Darling’s statement and adds his own, saying: “More homes welcome but a few thousand off your first mortgage has to be seen in light of UK annual rents jumping up by more than £3,000 in the last three years. 

“Add that to your planned spend every single year and you can see the problem with the government failing to limit rent rises.”

Twomey – a Labour candidate in the past – also took to X to criticise the government’s welfare cuts, following an OBR analysis of the measures. 

Twomey tweeted: “Shocking that any government could even accidentally force 250,000 people (including 50,000 children) into poverty. But to do so knowing that their own impact assessment predicts it, is outrageous. 

“Pushing people into poverty doesn’t help them to escape it. Never has, never will.”