Labour has announced that it intends to unveil a housebuilding programme within days if it wins the general election this Thursday.

In its manifesto, the party unveiled a radical plan to build 1.5 million new homes over its first term in government.

They would do this by reclassifying supposedly poor-quality areas of the green belt to “grey belt” – identified as car parks, scrubland and former tips – to free them up for development, Labour revealed at the weekend.

But experts have warned that although the outlines of Labour’s housing ambitions are viable, the “Get Britain Building” section of its manifesto “lacks the detail” that would ensure a sustainable housing future for the UK.

Labour has identified the housing crisis as “one of the country’s biggest barriers to growth”, proposing to hire 300 new planning officers and blocking local authorities from “stonewalling” developments on the newly designated “grey belt”.

James White, professor in urban studies at the University of Glasgow, told i that Keir Starmer’s housing plans sound feasible – but come with “lots of caveats”, specifically around land ownership, financing and the understated role of local authorities.

Labour has not made it clear how it would override the will of local authorities or how it would begin recruiting 300 planning officers, he said.

Labour has not made it clear how it would override the will of local authorities or how it would begin recruiting 300 planning officers, he said.

i takes a closer look at the 1.5 million homes pledge – and whether experts think it is possible to achieve.

Will Labour’s pledge to recruit 300 planning officers boost housing?

Labour’s proposal to hire 300 planning officers will help Britain “get building” again according to Sir Keir Starmer.

But these new planners will replace less than a 10th of the planners who left public service during the first decade of the current Conservative government.

Roughly 3,100 planners left the public sector, almost a fifth of the total it employed, between 2010 and 2020 according to the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI). The Institute highlighted that much higher salaries in the private sector, due to years of public sector underfunding, may be tempting existing planners away.

Jonathan Rolande, who formed the National Association of Property Buyers in 2013, said that adding another planning officer to less than half the country’s constituencies – what the number would amount to – seemed feasible.

But Mr White said 300 officers would make little difference to the current planning system, which Labour thinks lacks speed.

He questioned whether raising the land transfer tax on non-UK residents would fund the extra officers, and how easy this would be to enforce, adding that it is disappointing that they seem to “blame planners for everything”.

Mr White said that although Labour would not struggle to source and hire the added planners, he warned that many have been “tempted away into other fields” and therefore “would have to be tempted with better conditions.”

Though the number of planners within the public sector has shrunk, the number of those within the private sector has increased dramatically, almost doubling.

Salaries for planners have failed to keep up with inflation according to the RTPI, making it a less attractive profession for graduates and existing planners than it was in 2005. It has also highlighted high workplace stress and overwork as issues which were impacting existing employees.

Are Labour’s plans to build on green belt land viable?

Both experts found problems with Labour’s claim that it will “not be afraid to make full use of intervention powers” to bulldoze through current planning legislation.

Labour has pledged that if it wins Thursday’s election it will immediately start identifying poor-quality land in the existing green belt – such as car parks, petrol stations, ununused industrial sites and skips – for new developments.

Deputy leader Angela Rayner has said she will tell local councils to assess the green belt land for potential reclassification to “grey belt” land that is ripe for new development.

Potential areas previously tipped for development under the party’s new towns plan include the Thames estuary in Essex and Kent and areas near Nottingham, Stafford and Northampton in the Midlands.

Another local area that has been feted for new development by Labour leaders is the South Hampshire area.

Plenty of local authorities under Conservative rule build on green belt land. However, developers do need the support of local authorities to build on any land under current legislation, so Labour would have to pass new laws that change this system, which Mr White said “would likely take more than two years” after it is written and potentially appealed nationally.

They are also likely to face local opposition. Many local authorities haven’t been playing ball with plans to build on the green belt in recent years. Cambridge City Council vehemently opposed plans spearheaded by Housing Secretary Michael Gove to build more than £150,000 new homes in the Cambridge area, citing potential issues such as water scarcity, transport infrastructure and social care.

Planning approvals have dropped to record lows in the UK. Just 2,778 developments in Britain were granted planning permission in the year ending September 2023, according to data collected from Glenigan, an analytics provider for the building industry, and analysed by the Home Builders Federation (HBF).

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Mr White did concede that there is some truth to Labour’s claim that “under the Conservatives, green belt land is regularly released for development but haphazardly and often for speculative housebuilding”. But he added he did not see any signs of this in the Labour manifesto.

But Mr White added: “The problem Labour would have is without the central government playing a role in the buying, owning and stewardship of land – they will find it difficult not to perpetuate the problem that exists which is greenfield land gets developed speculatively by the private sector.”

Mr White said the success of building on greenfield land, would depend on “how far they can influence the local authority.”

Labour has said it plans to revive plans to build what are known as garden cities, with existing examples including Welwyn Garden City and Letchworth, which were built during the early 20th century in response to a growing population. Gordon Brown had proposed similar ideas, exploring the idea of creating new “eco-towns” in 2007, though plans failed to eventually materialise.

Mr White noted that the Labour manifesto failed to acknowledge that developers outside of London are most comfortable pushing out these sorts of post-War “new towns” Labour speak of on green-belt land.

He said that putting development on brownfield and “grey belt” land first would depend on “prohibiting greenfield development in the right places.”