How the government can build more homes

The Institute for Government has released a new report looking at why successive governments have found it difficult to deliver on housebuilding pledges.

How to build more homes is a question successive governments have struggled to answer.

Fixing the housing crisis has featured in every recent UK government’s list of top priorities: this report examines why so many have found it difficult to deliver on such ambitions, and how persistent barriers can be overcome.

England has a chronic housing shortage. Like many before it, the newly installed Labour government has promised to tackle this problem, and to “get Britain building”.

It has set an ambitious target to build 1.5 million new homes in five years, through a combination of planning reform, new towns and the “biggest increase in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation”. Now it faces the task of meeting this target; doing so will require a rate of completing new homes not seen since the 1960s.

The new report examines the history of why successive governments have found it difficult to deliver on housebuilding pledges. It identifies the persistent barriers to progress, and sets out 10 principles that Starmer’s government, and future ones, should adopt to underpin a better approach to navigating them:

1. Ensure housebuilding remains a consistent political priority led from the highest offices of government
2. Define what success looks like
3. Reconcile housebuilding ambitions with other policy objectives
4. Prioritise national housing targets over local objections
5. Plan for new housing where it is most needed, and consider how it will align with the government’s other growth and infrastructure plans
6. Align new developments with local growth and infrastructure plans
7. Ensure local areas share in the benefits of new housing
8. Equip the planning system to deliver effectively
9. Support industry to develop the skills pipeline it needs to deliver
10. Regularly review whether the market is delivering desired outcomes, and adjust if necessary

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