Housebuilders will come ‘nowhere near’ 1.5m homes target’

Britain’s housebuilders will not build anywhere near the 1.5 million homes that Labour is targeting over the next five years even with the government’s proposals to free up the planning system, a report says.
Research by the Centre for Cities think tank suggests that private developers are on course to deliver about 1.12 million new flats and houses by 2029. That would leave the government with a 388,000-home shortfall, which is “unlikely to be bridged” by a rapid increase in public sector housebuilding.
The bulk of that shortfall would be felt in large towns and cities, Centre for Cities said. In London, for example, it is predicting that developers will miss their target by 196,000 homes.
Building 1.5 million homes within five years has been one of Labour’s key pledges since Sir Keir Starmer’s election in July. Publicly, the housebuilding industry has welcomed such an ambitious target but privately few executives think it possible.
Developers have for years been complaining about a slow and complex planning system and Labour has promised to improve it, for example by allowing houses to be built on “ugly” parts of the green belt, now also known as the “grey belt”.
However, the Centre for Cities chief executive, Andrew Carter, has said “wholesale planning reform” is needed if developers are to return to the levels of output achieved in the Fifties and Sixties, which is what is required for Labour to get even close to its 1.5 million homes target.
“Rightly, the government has set a bold housebuilding target,” Carter said. “For the country to achieve it, parts of England would have to reach an 80-year high in housebuilding. This would be a huge positive for the country but the approach has to be much more ambitious.”
To increase the number of homes being built, the think tank has called on the government to replace the current discretionary planning system with a “rules-based, flexible, European-style zoning system”. The think tank also wants to see more green belt land released for development, especially that which is close to popular commuter railway stations.
Recognising that private developers cannot solve the housing crisis on their own, Centre for Cities said a “substantial increase in grant-funded public housebuilding” is also needed.
“We’re in a productivity crisis,” Carter added. “The UK’s big cities are the jobs and productivity engines of the economy but our planning system doesn’t allow — and has never allowed — them to build an adequate supply of homes for everyone that could work there. We have done wholesale planning reform before and we can do it again.”
A government spokesperson said: “Despite the dire housebuilding inheritance we are trying to fix, we will deliver the 1.5 million homes our country desperately needs and get Britain building again. To get there the government has already outlined plans to streamline the planning system, restored mandatory housing targets, established a programme to unblock homes stuck in the planning process and set up a new body to deliver the next generation of new towns.
“On top of this our Planning and Infrastructure Bill will go even further in overhauling the planning system to boost housebuilding and economic growth across the country.”