Starmer pledges to push on with housebuilding “from day one” as it targets 1.5m homes
Labour will make at least three major housing announcements within a fortnight of the party forming a government, according to reports.
The party, which is widely expected to win a sizeable majority in Thursday’s general election, is expected to move quickly on its manifesto pledges.
Angela Rayner will reportedly announce a housebuilding programme in the party’s second week in power.
Labour will by the third week write to councils to tell them to start regularly reviewing their green belt boundaries to ensure they are hitting housing targets. The intention is that councils will identify green belt land that can be reclassified for development.
The party has pledged to prioritise the release of lower quality green belt land, which it is terming ‘grey belt’, as part of its plan to build 1.5m homes over five years.
Before the end of July, the party will publish a draft national planning policy framework, reimposing local housing targets in a bid to ensure that councils are meeting local need.
The current Conservative government effectively removed mandatory down local targets in 2022 by allowing councils to instead use them as a “starting point”, with more flexibility to depart from them depending on local circumstances.
Starmer, in a joint interview with shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, told the Sunday Times that Labour promised to “hit the ground running” on boosting housebuilding from “day one”.
>>See also: Who’s who in Labour’s would-be cabinet
On the green belt, Reeves said “We all know that there is building on greenfield [sites] today but it’s chaotic.
“We also know there are different types of green belt land. Just because something’s designated ‘green belt’ does not mean it’s green.”
The party is also set to announce a recruitment drive for 300 planning officers, to help speed planning approvals along with details of a “first dibs” scheme, prioritising new homes for local residents to make it harder for properties to be sold to overseas investors.
Labour’s pledge of 1.5m homes over the five-year parliament echoes the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto pledge of building 300,000 homes a year. But they haven’t met this pledge, with just 234,400 net additions to the housing stock in 2022/23.
At-a-glance: the key measures for housing in the Labour manifesto
- build 1.5 million new homes over the next parliament
- re-instate mandatory housing targets, strengthen presumptions in favour of sustainable development and fund additional planning officers, paid for by increasing the rate of the stamp duty surcharge paid by non-UK residents
- prioritise the release of supposedly lower quality “grey belt” land
- build a new generation of new towns and to reform compulsory purchase compensation rules relating to hope value
- new planning powers and housing grant funding flexibilities for combined authorities
- make changes to the Affordable Homes Programme “to ensure that it delivers more homes from existing funding”
- establish an Industrial Strategy Council
- a £7.3bn National Wealth Fund to be tasked with supporting Labour’s growth and clean energy missions.
- develop a 10-year infrastructure strategy
- update national planning policy to make it easier to build laboratories, digital infrastructure and gigafactories
- invest an extra £6.6bn as part of its Warm Homes Plan to upgrade five million homes
- extend Awaab’s law [requiring require social housing landlords to adhere to strict time limits to address dangerous hazards such as damp and mould in their properties] to the private rental sector
- end ‘bidding wars’ in the private rented sector
Starmer said this 1.5m figure would likely be backloaded, with more homes being built towards the end of the period.
He said: “We’ll ramp up over the parliament. Therefore, towards the end of that, we’ll be doing more than the 300,000 [a year].”
Labour last month also announced it would bring forward a package of reforms to the private rental sector, including extending Awaab’s law – which requires landlords to fix damp and mould and other hazards within a specified timeframe – to private landlords and acting to end ‘bidding wars’ between tenants.
The party was criticised last month for omitting an affordable housing target from its manifesto. The party had previously said it would target 40% affordable housing on its proposed new towns, but the manifesto did not include this specific target, attracting criticism from thinktank Common Wealth.
A Labour spokesperson declined to confirm a specific timeframe for when the policies Starmer and Reeves talked about would be introduced.
Election focus
With the general election fast approaching, the UK is facing some serious problems.
Low growth, flatlining productivity, question marks over net zero funding and capability, skills shortages and a worsening housing crisis all amount to a daunting in-tray for the next government.
This election therefore comes with very high stakes for the built environment and the economy as a whole. Building’s coverage aims to help the industry understand the issues and amplify construction’s voice so that the parties hear it loud and clear.
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