Property businesses have urged Chancellor Rachel Reeves to ensure her plans for boosting the country’s housing supply are “not just hot air”.
In her first speech in the role, Ms Reeves outline a raft of initiatives to help build around 1.5 million homes in England over the course of the parliament.
These range from unlocking “grey belt” land, that which is notionally in the green belt but is judged to be of poor quality – such as a disused car park – to hiring more planning officers.
But industry insiders now want to see action, especially given some of the government’s targets and aims could be outside its control.
“It is great to hear from our Chancellor that planning reform is a priority for the new Government, and the introduction of mandatory housebuilding targets will go some way to resolving the supply issues which have plagued the housing market in recent years,” said Phil Lawford, national account manager at Saffron for Intermediaries, a mortgage broker.
“It is important, however, that this burst of announcements is the beginning of a plan that will deliver homes in the long term, and not just hot air from a Government trying to make its mark.”
Dominic Agace, boss of estate agent Winkworth, welcomed the “positive statements” from Ms Reeves surrounding housing delivery and resolving the issue of underfunded planning departments.
“The intent definitely appears to be there to solve two parts of the puzzle,” he said. “We wait to see how the final part takes shape – encouraging housebuilders to build the homes in a difficult economic environment with a high cost of labour, materials and perhaps most importantly high interest rates.”
Simon Vernon-Harcourt, design and planning director at housebuilder City and Country, welcomed the move to recruit more planning officers as the industry “desparately needs them”.
He added: “As it stands, reports and information crawl through the system due to the lack of resources. While this is a strong place to start and should be a key priority, proactive and pragmatic officers must be appointed who can deal sensibly with issues.”
Chris Lawson, owner of design consultant CK Architectural, agreed the shortfall in planning officers had been a “clear and obvious contributor to the building industry recession seen in 2023/24.
“We have witnessed price hikes and a dramatic reduction in the help and overall service from local authority planning departments.”
He added that firms such as his were more frequently being told they had one chance to change things when designs need tweaking, which he said reduced the success rate of applications, and the processing speed further still.
“In short, councils have had to make extreme cuts to their service and increase prices, which will always result in less approved plans for builders, developers and homeowners,” he added.
“Anything that increases staff and serviceability in the council will result in more building work available to rekick the industry; the system needs streamlining for basic applications and more resources to help gain approval when appropriate.”
Ms Reeves’s target for the number of houses to be built has also raised questions, especially as it is unclear how the chancellor will get developers to build if they opt to sit on land for longer due to the high price of labour and materials.
Jeremy Lead, an estate agent in North London, said having a target was “very important” but that collaboration would be required.
“The last time the country achieved anything like this target was with considerable assistance of local authorities and we believe that they should be encouraged to build more, either in partnership with private developers or housing associations, otherwise the target will be very difficult to achieve by private builders on their own,” he said.
James Saunders, chief executive at Quintain, the developer involved in the Wembley Park urban redevelopment.
“Rachel Reeves said ‘there is no time to waste’ and we couldn’t agree more,” he said.
“At Wembley Park we have successfully undertaken one of London’s largest urban transformations and created a place thousands of people and businesses already call home.
“We have demonstrated the speed and efficiency with which the build-to-rent sector can deliver new homes, in an exciting neighbourhood through collaboration with the local authority and a shared vision.
“For this to continue the UK needs to harness institutional and overseas funding and we are optimistic that Labour will recognise the vital importance of inward investment.”
Mr Agace agreed, noting that given the UK’s “perilous debt situation”, it made “perfect sense to court private sector investment to infrastructure” to help boost growth.
“However, the shadow of the issues with Thames Water does hang over this and needs to be addressed,” he added.
Mr Vernon-Harcourt added that land was in “such short supply” that it rapidly went to the highest bidder, which didn’t always lead to the best quality properties being built.
“With so little land available, there is rarely any real local competition to offer buyers options for different designs of homes and give buyers a choice on where to live, what to live in, and at an affordable level,” he said.
“Much of a house’s sales price comes from the land value at the start, therefore making more land available and the promise to unlock grey belt land will help lower the costs and give potential homeowners greater choice.”
Mr Lawford said it “remains to be seen” whether any targets for the energy efficiency of homes were announced.
“The UK’s housing stock is some of the worst in Europe when it comes to energy efficiency, so it would be good to see this recognised in policy in the coming months,” he added.