Can Labour solve Britain’s housing crisis?

In brief:

• Rachel Reeves has outlined a plan to address housing issues by promising to build 1.5 million homes over five years, reform the planning system, and prioritise brownfield and grey belt land for development.
• The plan includes reforms such as restoring mandatory housing targets, creating a task force to accelerate stalled housing sites, supporting local authorities with additional planning officers, and overturning the ban on onshore wind farms.
• Despite potential opposition, Reeves emphasised the necessity of trade-offs and a commitment to national interest over local opposition, though there are concerns about whether the increased housing supply will lead to more affordable homes.

Labour start their week with a message on housing

In a moment of firsts, the first female Chancellor has begun her first week in government by delivering her first speech to the British public since winning the general election.

Rachel Reeves took to the podium at No 10 to address the housing problems facing Britain. Repeating promises made in the party’s manifesto, Reeves announced that Labour will get “Britain building again”, promising 1.5 million homes in the next five years.

Housing has long been a problem in the UK, for renters, owners and first-time buyers alike. The hardship young people face trying to purchase their first home is often at the core of the discourse - and with good reason. The average age of a first-time buyer in the UK is now 34 years old.

How likely is it that we will actually see 1.5 million homes built in Britain in the next five years?

"They [Labour] don’t get to build those homes until they massively reform the speed and the flexibility of our planning laws" Emily Maitlis says on The News Agents. "In other words, you can't just push back and push back and push back by talking to councils and lawyers and putting hurdles in the way, you just have to say yes and get on and do it”.

Reeves said she met with the Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner on their first weekend in government, to “agree the urgent action needed to fix our planning system.”

Reeves set out a plan, summarised as follows:

• Reform the National Planning Policy Framework and restore mandatory housing targets
• Give priority to energy projects in the system to ensure they make swift progress
• Create a new task force to accelerate stalled housing sites in our country
• Support local authorities with 300 additional planning officers across the country.
• Prioritise Brownfield and grey belt land for development to meet housing targets where needed.
• Reform the planning system to deliver the infrastructure that our country needs.

The plan also included an end to the ban on onshore wind farms in England, which has today (8 July) been overturned.

The Conservatives’ mandatory building targets of 300,000 new homes a year were scrapped by Rishi Sunak after rebellion from backbench MPs. Instead, the target was made “advisory” - allowing local councils the option of building fewer homes than the target asked.

Jon Sopel can foresee a similar scenario playing out again. On today's episode of The News Agents he says: “When you try to build that much so quickly, you’re going to find protest. You’ll find people saying I don’t want it, we don’t want it, our community doesn’t need, this is going to spoil the countryside and ruin our greenbelt.”

Preempting any opposition to Labour’s mandatory targets, Reeves said: “I know that there will be opposition to this. I’m not naïve to that”.

Adding: “We must acknowledge that trade-offs always exist: any development may have environmental consequences, place pressure on services, and rouse voices of local opposition.”

“But we will not succumb to a status quo which responds to the existence of trade-offs by always saying no, and relegates the national interest below other priorities.”

Speaking to The News Agents, housing journalist Vicky Spratt asked: “How many homes in this 1.5 million figure, in these new towns, are going to be truly affordable social homes?”

Jon Sopel responded: "Presumably the thinking is that if you have built 1.5 million new homes there is much more supply, and according to laws of supply and demand, prices will come down."

But Spratt isn’t convinced, noting that the Conservatives Help To Buy scheme did help some new first time buyers, but house prices didn’t come down. “I don’t think houses work like other assets” she said, “that’s going to be one of the biggest issues Labour face, because what we know about housing is that it doesn’t function in the way other products or assets do”.

The question: Can Labour solve Britain’s housing crisis? Is still very much an open one. Reeves appears steadfast in her plans to tackle this issue, taking swift action early on. But as anyone who's ever applied for as much as a loft conversion knows, navigating the maze of planning approvals is tough—let alone on a national scale.

Listen to the full interview in today's episode of The News Agents.