England’s housing crisis cannot be solved without forcing councils to build more homes, the government has said, as ministers confirm binding targets that will compel authorities to build 370,000 homes a year.
Keir Starmer said his government “owes it to working families to take urgent action”, as he and the housing secretary, Angela Rayner, announce how much each area must build over the next parliament.
Ministers hope the revised National Planning Policy Framework, which will also define the “grey belt” for the first time, will help meet the government’s promise of building 1.5m new homes over the course of the parliament.
The prime minister said: “For far too long, working people graft hard but are denied the security of owning their own home. With a generation of young people whose dream of home ownership feels like a distant reality, and record levels of homelessness, there’s no shying away from the housing crisis we have inherited.
“We owe it to those working families to take urgent action, and that is what this government is doing. Our Plan for Change will put builders not blockers first, overhaul the broken planning system and put roofs over the heads of working families and drive the growth that will put more money in people’s pockets.”
Rayner said: “Today’s landmark overhaul will sweep away last year’s damaging changes and shake up a broken planning system which caves into the blockers and obstructs the builders.
“I will not hesitate to do what it takes to build 1.5m new homes over five years and deliver the biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation.”
Local authorities, however, are warning that they should not be overlooked when setting local and regional housing targets.
Adam Hug, the housing spokesperson for the Local Government Association, said: “For councils to share the government’s ambition to tackle local housing challenges, there must be a collaborative approach. It is councils and communities who know their local areas and are therefore best placed to make judgment decisions on how to manage competing demand for land use through the local plan-led system.”
The new framework will include a series of golden rules for planning authorities, including that they should build on brownfield land first and lower quality green belt land after that. It will define for the first time exactly what should qualify under this new “grey belt” definition, with experts saying it could end up covering an area as large as Surrey.
The golden rules also include putting a priority on social and affordable homes. However, industry insiders say this will not be possible without billions of pounds more grant funding under the government’s Affordable Housing Programme. The level of this funding will be confirmed by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, next year.
The framework document will also set the individual targets for each planning authority. When ministers published their consultation document earlier in the year, it included proposals to significantly cut the target for London and other cities, earning criticism from some housing experts.
Research from Shelter revealed on Wednesday that homelessness in England had risen 14% thanks in part to a lack of social housing. The country has one of the worst homelessness problems in the world, with about 360,000 people now living in temporary accommodation.
