The Chancellor, John Healey, will announce more than £1bn of new capital funding for social and affordable housing in Wednesday's Budget, the Mirror reports.
The paper says the money could deliver up to 10,000 council homes. It says total capital investment in the Social and Affordable Homes Programme would rise to more than £40bn over the next 10 years.
According to the report, the government also plans to help more councils borrow for housebuilding by extending preferential rates. A Treasury spokesman is quoted defending the housing investment, which indicates the measure has been briefed by the government ahead of the statement.
The report does not give a cost per home or a timescale. It also does not say how much of the £1bn is new money and how much is reallocated from existing budgets. The figures have not been independently checked and will not be confirmed until the Chancellor delivers the Budget on 28 October.
Shelter's acting chief executive, Mairi MacRae, called the reported funding "another important step in the right direction". She said the government must go further and called for council housing debt to be removed from council balance sheets.