We knew our country was in the grip of a housing emergency before we took office. But it’s even more grim than we imagined. Not just a high-tax, low-growth economy and crumbling public services. But, lurking under each stone we lift, a frankly scandalous legacy.
Prisons running out of spaces and a broken housing market, causing untold economic and social hardship that has left few communities untouched.
We simply do not have enough homes.
In the death throes of the clapped-out Conservative government, it gave up on governing and compounded its housing failure. In the first three months of this year, work started on 41% fewer homes compared with the same period in 2023.
The result? Families struggling to cover soaring rents and meet mounting mortgage costs. Tenants paying through the nose for damp, cramped and unsafe conditions and too many leaseholders trapped by eye-watering charges with no way out.
A generation locked out of the dream of home ownership. Homelessness going into overdrive, putting councils under huge financial pressure.
Nearly 150,000 children in temporary accommodation – the highest number since records began in 2004. In London, that’s the equivalent of one child in every primary school classroom.
The situation is particularly acute in social and affordable housing. There are 1.3 million households waiting for council homes. But in 2022-23, the last government delivered just 41,000 affordable homes for rent.
Meanwhile, its much-vaunted Affordable Homes Programme was expected to deliver up to 180,000 homes on its launch in 2020.
Perhaps to no one’s surprise, I can reveal that it won’t reach even three-quarters of that goal, according to the revised figures. Another target missed – testament to the high price we are all paying for a government of self-service, not service. This is all shortsighted in the extreme.
Because, as I know from my own experience, a secure, affordable home is not a luxury or simply nice to have, but the foundation on which everything else is built: decent work, a strong community, opportunity and hope for the future.
All of which are essential for driving the growth every part of our country needs and deserves. That’s why, as set out in the King’s speech, we’re changing course and taking the brakes off, with a plan to get Britain building again.
We are committed not just to delivering 1.5m homes over the next five years and the infrastructure to secure a cleaner, greener, more prosperous future, but to building the biggest wave of social and affordable housing for a generation.
This starts with the ambitious planning reforms that were the focus of the chancellor’s first major announcement, and front and centre of last week’s King’s speech.
Our planning system should be a launchpad for the secure, affordable, attractive homes we need, the infrastructure to go with them and to helping achieve our environmental goals.
Yet the system is, too often, a millstone, dragging down not just our housing market, but growth in every part of the country. Which is why we are taking a radically different approach from the last government, which every single year missed its own housing targets.
We will reverse the damaging set of changes made last December when it backed down in the face of vested interests, scrapped mandatory housing targets and torpedoed housebuilding rates.
Let it never be forgotten that it was the last government’s haphazard approach to building on the green belt that has seen so many of the wrong homes built in the wrong places, without the local services people need.
To be clear, this government is committed to preserving the green belt. But we need to move away from this broken system. That’s why we’re committed to taking a more strategic approach, prioritising poor-quality grey-belt land for building and introducing “golden rules” to ensure development works for local people and nature.
We plan to set out in detail more of these early and important changes in an updated National Planning Policy Framework next week.
Construction to build new homes was down nearly 40% in the first three months of this year, compared with the year before.
The Tories cut resources from councils, reducing the number of expert planners, and now planning permissions granted are at the lowest number in a decade.
They let councils without a local plan off the hook. Now less than one-third of local authorities have an up-to-date plan for the housing they are meant to build.
For 14 long years, Tory self-interest prevented families across Britain from having access to safe, secure affordable homes and locked a generation out of the dream of home ownership. Turning the tide on a decade of stalled housebuilding and sluggish growth will be a hard slog but it’s already begun.
The Tories were afraid of their own shadows, running from their own members and in thrall to blockers. This Labour government isn’t afraid of making hard decisions in the national interest to power growth in every part of the country. We were elected on a mandate to build the homes Britain needs and take the tough choices to unblock the planning system and make it a reality. When it comes to housebuilding, we will no longer be asking “if” but “how”.
Delivering social and affordable houses at scale is not only my No 1 priority to ensure everyone has a secure roof over their head. It is also a crucial step on the path to 1.5m homes, kickstarting the sector out of this slump. That’s why we will take action to inject confidence and certainty into the social housing system, so that councils and private providers can get back to building.
Local leaders who know their areas best will be key to helping us deliver on these bold ambitions.
We will therefore work with local government to plan new housing in the best possible places, with the supporting infrastructure, public services and green spaces that residents need. We will also make brownfield development our first priority and make sure that a green belt established in the middle of the 20th century works properly for the 21st.
And we will deliver a generation of new large-scale communities; providing new jobs and opportunities by unlocking the potential of the towns and cities which are the engine rooms of our economy.
Aside from a breakthrough on housing and planning, we’ve created a national wealth fund to grow our economy, cancelled the failed Rwanda scheme, lifted the near-decade-long ban on onshore wind, and started work on providing 40,000 extra NHS appointments and 700,000 urgent dental appointments.
It will take time to repair the huge damage that’s been done, but we’re starting as we mean to go on – with energy and purpose to rebuild Britain and give everyone a brighter future.
• Angela Rayner is Labour MP for Ashton-under-Lyne, deputy prime minister, and secretary of state for housing, communities and local government
