Angela Rayner announces radical housing reform with mandatory targets for councils to tackle Tory legacy
30 July 2024, 14:18 | Updated: 30 July 2024, 14:46
Deputy Prime Minister and Housing Secretary Angela Rayner has declared that the country is living through the “most acute housing crisis in living history” as she announced a radical reform to the country’s housing planning system.
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She has set out Labour's "radical" plan to build homes as part of the Government's "number one mission" of driving growth, and promised to fix the Tories’ legacy by bringing back mandatory housing targets of 370,000 a year on councils.
When accusing the previous government of ignoring statutory targets to appease "anti-housing backbenchers" she said the number of new homes likely to be built this year will be less than 200,000.
She said: "This legacy makes our job all the harder, but it also makes it so much more urgent."
Speaking in the House of Commons, she told MPs: "I've come to the House to make a statement about this Government's plan to get Britain building.
"Delivering economic growth is our number one mission. It's how we'll raise living standards for everyone, everywhere. The only way we can fix our public services.
"So today I am setting out a radical plan to not only get the homes we desperately need, but also drive the growth, create jobs and breathe life back into towns and cities.
"We are ambitious, and what I say won't be without controversy, but this is urgent because this Labour Government is not afraid to take on the tough choices needed to deliver for our country."
She said the Government will introduce "mandatory" housing targets and a new method for calculating housing need.
She told the Commons: "Decisions about what to build should reflect local views... well, that should be about how to deliver new homes, not whether to.
"Whilst the previous government watered down housing targets, caving into their anti-growth backbenchers, this Labour Government is taking the tough choices putting people and country first.
"For the first time we will make local housing targets mandatory, requiring local authorities to use the same method to work out how many homes to build.
"But that alone is insufficient to meet our ambition, so we're also changing the standard method used to calculate housing need so it better reflects the urgency of supply for local areas.
"Rather than relying on outdated data, this new method will require local authorities to plan for homes proportionate to the size of existing communities, and it will incorporate an uplift where house prices are most out of step with local incomes."
"The collective total of these local targets will therefore rise from some 300,000 a year to just over 370,000 a year."
The Deputy Prime Minister told colleagues the country faces "an acute housing crisis" that has resulted in "high levels of homelessness, over one million households on social housing waiting lists, homes on average in England costing more than eight times average incomes and fewer than 200,000 homes forecast to be built this year."
Downing Street said: "She outlined that the Government would set out plans to lay the foundations for 1.5 million new homes across Britain over this Parliament.
"Working people are facing huge challenges to find a safe and decent home to call their own and this Government is setting out the first steps to make this happen."
Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves warned that "more difficult choices" were on the way, after axing winter fuel payments for many pensioners in a bid to help plug a £22 billion black hole in public finances.
