The new government is in something of a hole over housing. It has around four and a half years in which to build the 1.5 million houses that Keir Starmer has promised and, by common consent – indeed by the housing secretary’s own admission   – net additions of new homes are likely to fall to around 200,000 this year. That’s way off target.

More than that, the volume of planning applications being submitted and granted is as low as it has been for at least a decade, with official statistics showing the number of major planning permissions granted in the year to April 2023 at 42% below the 2016/17 peak. According to research by data firm Glenigan for the Home Builders Federation (HBF), permission for just 230,000 homes was granted in the year to June 2024 – way below what housebuilders believe would be necessary to build at or above the 300,000 homes per year targeted.

It is into this bleak winter backdrop, then, that Labour ministers delivered the industry a veritable bulging Christmas stocking full of planning policy gifts in the run-up to the festive break.