Housing minister ‘convinced’ government will meet 1.5 million homes plan

Housing minister Matthew Pennycook has told a committee of MPs he is ”convinced” the government can deliver its 1.5 million new homes target over this parliament.

Pennycook admitted he and deputy prime minister Angela Rayner had always been “completely candid” about the challenge of meeting the target within a single parliament.

But he told a committee of MPs from the housing select committee earlier this week: ”On the 1.5 million new homes target, I am convinced it is deliverable and I believe it is essential, more importantly.”

Committee member, Labour MP Florence Eshalomi, said that since 2017, previous governments had only managed to deliver around 234,000 net additional homes per year.

Pennycook said the government would not be setting annual targets but Eshalomi asked: “If you don’t have any interim targets, even something for the sector to respond to, how are we realistically going to measure progress or any slippage?”

The minister said the number of planning permissions granted and additional new completions will be published as normal, which “the sector will be able to see whether we’ve turned the system around and are making progress towards that final full parliament target”. He added he was “comfortable” the government will reach the target by the end of its five-year term.

But he admitted that “delivering 1.5 million homes is going to be more difficult than we expected in opposition”, adding Labour knew it would be grappling with a “difficult inheritance” from the previous government.

He said changes to the NPPF last December had exacerbated a fall in housing supply with the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting new supply will drop below 200,000 homes this year.