Will we ever see the long-awaited housing strategy?
Perhaps inevitably, the target of 1.5 million new homes during the lifetime of this parliament has been the focus for many people within the built environment sector since the 2024 General Election. To most of us, that target now looks entirely unachievable. The reappointed Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government has also acknowledged that the target is now ‘difficult’, but she is ‘not going to be defeated’.
The emphasis on planning reform being essential to deliver new homes meant there was much disappointment when we didn’t see an updated National Planning Policy Framework before summer recess. Another document we still await is the much talked of (at least in some circles) long-term housing strategy.
Back in July 2024, Angela Rayner stated that ‘because we know that the housing crisis cannot be fixed overnight, the Government will in the coming months publish a long-term housing strategy’.
We have now been waiting for that strategy for two years.
In its absence work has of course been progressed. As well as work to roll out a new local and strategic plan making system, the sites for New Towns are being whittled down, £39 billion in funding for the Social and Affordable Homes Programme was announced, and legislation has been passed in relation to leasehold and renters rights. Andy Burnham’s arrival as Prime Minister has also seen one of his headline pledges being to deliver the biggest council housing building programme since the post-war period.
Fixing Our Broken Housing Market was published in 2017. It recognised that too few homes have been built and argued that changes to the planning system would be made to support an increase in supply. It also looked to tackle the speed at which homes are then delivered and diversify the house-building market. Its fourth and final section recognised that while the long-term aim was to be build more homes, that would take time, and so additional interventions were needed in the short term to prevent homelessness and improve the private rented sector.
Reading it again almost a decade after it was published highlights perhaps how little has changed. And you could perhaps argue that undermines the need for a strategy at all. I would certainly agree that delivering a strategy should not be at the cost of action. But rushing into action and reform without considering how the whole housing system fits together risks, I believe, unintended consequences or overlooking areas of the system that need urgent intervention.
Delivering new homes is important. But if we are interested in the quality of our homes, there are also significant challenges around improving and retrofitting our existing 25.6 million homes. We need to think about how the diverse needs of our ageing population can and should be met. Work needs to be done to increase the availability of temporary accommodation and support people, including children, to move out of it into more permanent homes. And we need to consider how we use existing homes most efficiently, including bringing empty homes back into use.
Addressing these issues might not all support the achievement of 1.5 million new homes by 2029 specifically. But we also know that local councils spent a total of £2.8 billion on temporary accommodation during 2024/25 to accommodate households who are homeless.
We need to understand and seek to tackle the housing crisis holistically. That means considering existing as well as new homes. And homes of all tenures. Private and public sector organisations need to take long term decisions to help address a crisis that has been decades in the making. I hope therefore that the Government, under the new Prime Minister, will prioritise publishing a housing strategy that provides that long-term view.
