Labour will find it “really, really difficult” to deliver the homes it has promised during this Parliament , experts have warned, amid calls for a major boost in funding for council housing . Sir Keir Starmer’s Government has pledged to build 1.5 million homes , the equivalent of 300,000 a year, in a bid to tackle the housing crisis and drive economic growth.
But the latest figures show just 50,000 homes were completed in the UK in the final quarter of 2023, down 16 per cent in the same quarter of 2022. The construction industry says it continues to be hampered by issues including Brexit, high interest rates and a lack of skills . Alex Diner, a former Labour candidate and housing expert at the New Economics Foundation (NEF), said the Government needs to inject a large amount of capital into grant funding for housing as well as simplify the application process.
Even so, he told i : “It’s like turning round an oil tanker, it’s going to be really, really difficult. “I think in five years time, if we’re building 40,000 to 60,000 [social rent houses] a year we’re doing pretty well. That would be a return to the numebrs of the early noughties.
” Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has announced significant changes during her first month in Government including increasing housing targets for councils and a revamp of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPFF). However, the scale of the challenge has been laid bare after a protest erupted over a landmark project .