18 COMMENT TESTING TIMES


Patrick Mooney warns the Government’s 1.5 million homes target requires urgent funding and policy reforms if it is to be achieved.


Patrick Mooney, Housing Consultant


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as the Government already signalled that it is unlikely to meet its ambitious target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of the net fi ve years In public it has not, but behind the scenes there are rumours of a longer timetable being set which would take us beyond the next election.


Given the many challenges it inherited from the previous administration this was always going to be a tough target to meet, but after si months in offi ce it appears the sheer scale of the problem has forced Ministers to admit there are huge industrywide issues to resolve and they under-estimated the scale of these before the election earlier this year. In a landmark report from the housing consultancy Savills, which was sponsored by the National Housing Federation, there are predictions that without signifi cant levels of Government funding and support the sector is likely to deliver no more than one million homes by 2029.


DIFFICULT INHERITANCE


BEHIND THE SCENES THERE ARE RUMOURS OF A LONGER TIMETABLE BEING SET


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Appearing before the Housing, Communities and Local Government committee, the Housing Minister Matthew Pennycook told MPs that “delivering 1.5 million homes is going to be more diffi cult than we epected in opposition. He said Labour knew it would be grappling with a diffi cult inheritance, and that changes to the National Planning Policy Framework in December 2023 had exacerbated a fall in housing supply. n assuming offi ce he said we discovered the situation was even more acute than we epected. his is understood to be a reference to the ffi ce for udget esponsibilitys forecast that new housing supply will drop below 200,000 homes in the current year. He said it was essential that the headline target of 1.5 million new homes was met due to the lack of affordable housing and because 1.3 million people in the UK are on social housing waiting lists. However, he could not provide a fi gure for the number of affordable or social rent homes to be delivered within the overall new homes target.


he committee chair lorence shalomi MP pointed out that since 2017, previous governments had only managed to deliver around 234,000 net additional homes per year. hen pressed by shalomi on whether the new Labour Government would set interim


annual targets for housing delivery, the Minister said they would not. He explained: “You referenced 300,000 homes per year in your initial question, that was obviously the previous overnments target and it didnt hit it once in  years.


ANNUAL TARGETS


On interim housebuilding targets, Pennycook said this overnment deliberately didnt pick an annual target because we knew that we were going to inherit a very constrained supply and in particular, what amounts to essentially a collapse in affordable housing supply. he inister said the number of planning permissions granted and additional new completions will still be published as normal, saying “the sector will be able to see whether weve turned the system around and are making progress towards that fi nal full arliament target.


He added that “the trajectory is an upward one, with large amounts of housebuilding delivered in the later years of the arliament. ennycook said he is comfortable that the overnment will reach the target by the end of its fi veyear term, but he clearly did not convince all of the committee members on this point. Liberal Democrat MP Lee Dillon asked


Pennycook how many of the planned 1.5m homes will be for social rent. Pennycook said:  cant give you that fi gure, although we will have more clarity as we progress through arliament. e eplained that it is not as simple as taking a proportion of the total supply and saying 20% or 25% of it will be social housing, noting that around half of all social and affordable housing is currently delivered through Section 106 planning agreements with housebuilders.


SOCIAL RENTED HOMES NEEDED Matthew Pennycook said that the Government is committed to strengthening the existing developer contributions process, and also that pushing supply up through planning reform will help to deliver more affordable homes. owever, he added e wont know until the spending review settlement precisely how many social and affordable homes will come through that route.


he inister acknowledged that less than 10,000 social rented homes were delivered per year over the past 14 years, with the


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