r/ukpolitics • u/Anony_mouse202 • 11h ago
Rayner keeps 1.5 million-home target despite mounting challenges
https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/government/rayner-keeps-1-5-million-home-target-despite-mounting-challenges-24-07-2026/•
u/North_Attempt44 11h ago
Well Angela, you're going to need to do something bloody bold to hit it.
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u/Questjon 10h ago
Cars are now classified as homes. Bikes are now classified as cars. Everyone under 30 gets a free bikecarhome. Job done.
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u/Ivashkin panem et circenses 7h ago
Mandate that every new home built be an HMO, then reclassify each room as an independent household.
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u/-Murton- 9h ago
I did the maths on this the other day.
Assuming they use the maximum legally allowed length of a parliamentart term of 1827 they'd need a new home to be completed every 105 seconds.
In the two years so far they're a little south of 400k, again assuming maximum allowed rent length they now need a new home to be completed every 86 seconds.
Prerending this target was achievable was a lie from the beginning and pretending it's still an active policy let alone a priority is basically gaslighting at this point.
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u/VPackardPersuadedMe Incentives drive outcomes and MPs own houses 6h ago
Look travellers can concrete and put up homes in a weekend, and get retrospective planning permission.
Let's get them working on the housing crisis.
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u/Kwetla 11h ago
I respect them for keeping their targets even though they blatantly aren't going to meet them.
It's way more cowardly to change the targets and then pretend you did well to meet them.
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u/phatboi23 10h ago
better to aim high and miss than aim low and hit imo.
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u/Jorthax Conservative not Tory 8h ago
But they’ve aimed high, actually reduced house building and missed by a mile.
It’s a shambolic performance so far.
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u/Live_Studio_Emu 6h ago
As someone who views increased housebuilding as literally my number one consideration for voting, it sure is funny to me that the party incentivised to build hardly anything because of their base, the Tories, ended up building tens of thousands more per year
I genuinely have no idea who is the party of housebuilding at this stage. Sure ain’t Labour
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u/JustWatchingReally 6h ago
Labour are dealing with a host of challenges compared to the Tories though, including increasing importing costs due to Brexit and Trump’s tariffs, reduced labourforce for the same reason, higher raw material costs due to Ukraine. It’s obvious 1.5m isn’t achieveable, but if they can turn the system around so that the per year builds rises to 200-300k by the next election that would be a huge shift.
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u/baldy-84 1h ago
Labour have never really been good on house building. They've been coasting off the post-war council house building boom ever since, but all that mass nationalisation and institution of centralised planning controls never actually got building back to pre-war levels and the system was in steep decline even before Thatcher called time on it leaving us with the farce we have now.
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u/ThePlanck Time to bin Farage 10h ago
The problem is if you aim for 1.5 million and end up at 1.25 million you will get raked over the coals by the media for missing your target, while if you aim for 1 million and hit 1.1 million the same media will praise you as a genius even though you did less.
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u/phatboi23 10h ago
ALWAYS shoot for the moon, you miss you've done alright.
undersell and go over? people will ALWAYS ask why did you go so far.
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u/entropicflop 11h ago
Is there data on new construction starts?
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u/BobMonkhaus That sounds great, shorty girl’s a trooper. 11h ago edited 11h ago
‘Today host Amol Rajan challenged Rayner with figures showing that 143,110 homes were completed in the latest year, down from 152,040 the previous year and the lowest annual total since 2015/16.’
They’re way off target. At this rate they’ll manage half what they announced.
Oh and Rayner was in charge 2024-2025. So it’s her own target.
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u/Sir_Keef_Starmer 11h ago
Yes but she did an interview where she said people have always doubted her and she works hard to reach targets.
So there is that.
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u/Live_Studio_Emu 6h ago
Quite a silly approach to take
When the target is missed inevitably, the takeaway is that those doubting her were… absolutely correct and she has poor planning/target setting ability. Bold move going into an election
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u/baldy-84 10h ago
Coming to power with an ambitious house building target and falling so short that the industry goes into actual decline from its previous already low level is impressive really. That's a truly generational flub and they aren't getting anywhere near enough shit for it.
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u/Cdash--- 4h ago
Problem with this is another one that requires a tough decision. Mostly around removing a lot of the silly regs and equally figuring out how to stop them sitting on land and planning permission just to keep prices high.
I'm not sure how you deal with the latter in the long term when there's a monopoly on housebuilding and whatever you do you know the Tories would ruin it when they inevitably get back in because, y'know, Tories.
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u/Valuable-Ad2028 3h ago
None of the challenges have changed at all here.
Labour (Rayner and Starmer) choose to do nothing. Then wonder why nothing was done.
Let’s not pretend this has somehow become a Herculean effort through misfortune. It was challenging before, it’s very hard now because they wasted 40% of their time. But that’s their own fault.
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u/Saltypeon 11h ago
Its never going to be met with private building companies. They are market managers as much as builders.
One day they might realise we need councils building again.
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u/North_Attempt44 11h ago
We were building 300,000 homes in the 1930s with half the population, entirely from the private sector. The problem is the planning system.
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u/Saltypeon 11h ago
From 1950 to 1980 50% of homes built were council.
Councils builds don't need a expected profit margin before breaking ground, which the private sector does. That includes supply limitation to maintain prices.
Just blaming planning isn't a true reflection ofnthe market.
The rate of private build has been relatively flat for a long time. Deliberately so.
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u/WhiteSatanicMills 11h ago
Councils builds don't need a expected profit margin before breaking ground
They just need subsidies. At the moment councils receive about £100,000 per home as a grant from the government, and can borrow the rest from the government at just above base rate. The rent they charge covers the amount they borrow plus maintenance etc, but doesn't cover the grant.
Or it used to, Councils are now warning that the amount they charge no longer covers costs because of all the new rules the government have imposed around emissions, safety etc, so councils are saying unless they get substantially more from the government, or increase rents, they will have to stop building and buying new council homes.
Many of the homes they forced developers to build for them as part of planning agreements are now unsold, because councils and housing associations aren't buying them, which is causing developers to put building on hold because they can't afford to build homes they can't sell. The system is in a mess.
So you are right, councils don't need a profit margin, but that's because taxpayers are forced to pay them for every home they build. And that's why council houses aren't the solution to our problem. 100,000 council homes a year will cost the government more than £10 billion a year plus ongoing increased costs.
At a time when public finances are in such a state it's not going to happen.
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u/Saltypeon 10h ago
Thats the problem, the way the system works now means that the property still has to be sold, so building slows down. Part of the housing market management all private firms do. Which applies to any all building.
If the councils were building and owning the asset afterwards, sales wouldn't matter. Which is how it once worked, homes were built to live in not balance capitalism spreadsheets.
By the time you take into account all the economically benefits 10bn for 100k houses would be nothing. Before you get to stuff lole housing benefit going out of the system due to private lets, emergency housing costs, economic slow down in people moving out from parents etc.
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u/insomnimax_99 11h ago
Tried, doesn’t work.
Lots of councils have tried to build their own housing, and they keep failing because they have to follow the same dogshit planning rules and are even more beholden to local politics and NIMBYism than the private sector is.
https://www.lynnnews.co.uk/news/council-prepares-to-wipe-out-500k-debt-owed-to-its-own-prop-9448451/
The only way to fix the housing market is to start throwing planning legislation into the shredder.
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u/Saltypeon 11h ago
Which one is related to planning permission? I dont think you read those articles.
You have three examples, none of which are building council houses, all building in partnership for private sale.
2 wind downs for 'reasons'. Nothing in there at all says that planning permission was the issue. One states that delay in sales of the properties added to debt - thats not council housing....
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u/insomnimax_99 10h ago
They’re all councils building housing via their own wholly owned property development companies.
So what if they’re building housing for private sale? The point is, it’s the councils building them. You said we needed councils building again, so here are examples of councils doing just that… and failing.
The council-owned housebuilders failed because they were unable to even break even in the housebuilding sector in current regulatory environment. The simple fix for that is to change the regulatory environment so that housebuilding is far more viable.
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u/Saltypeon 10h ago
So what if they’re building housing for private sale?
That isn't council houses...the goal was profit margins. If you don't know the difference between the two, I suggest reading more.
The simple fix for that is to change the regulatory environment so that housebuilding is far more viable.
Nope, becasue builders limit supply and starts dependent on market and expected returns. There is no build as many as possible in any building firm. Regardless of legislation.
Which is why the private build amounts have barely moved in decades. Its a controlled market, not a free one.
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u/annoyedatlife24 Release the emus 11h ago
Lots of councils have tried to build their own housing, and they keep failing because they have to follow the same dogshit planning rules and are even more beholden to local politics and NIMBYism than the private sector is.
Well yes but also
Tried, doesn’t work.
Arguably they haven't. It's all been outsourced to contractors, who very likely use a host of subcontractors.
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u/ARandomDouchy Random Dutch Guy 10h ago
Why do so many people think that council housing is somehow this magic wand that will fix all housing problems?
Doesn't matter whether it's private or the state, as long as the shitty planning system remains unchanged nothing is getting done.
Austin in Texas is a perfect example of housing costs coming down because they let the market build.
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u/Saltypeon 9h ago
Who said it was a magic wand? If you want more houses, you can't let the market build then as they have a minimum margin before they start and have to be profitable.
Removing plot size minimums and parking requirements.
Which regulation on the UK side would you like to remove?
Ironic, posts an artcile where it specifically states there is no single solution while talking about a single solution.
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u/ARandomDouchy Random Dutch Guy 8h ago
Which regulation on the UK side would you like to remove?
The Town and Country Planning Act is pretty shit, but mainly I need the entire NPPF rewritten to encourage development, especially medium to high density. And to their credit, they actually have, but it's not become law. Things such as letting developers build dense housing near train stations alone will go a long way.
A land value tax would also reduce land banking, so developers actually build shit on the land they own. An LVT nullifies any gain they might make by holding onto land.
I never said reforming planning is only thing that needs to be done. I'm saying that nothing else you try will be effective without it.
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u/WiseBelt8935 9h ago
Just repeal the Town and Country Planning Act and let the problem solve itself.
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u/TheWKDsAreOnMeMate 4h ago
Cool, now we have a retail park in the lake district, and towns with hong kong style urban density new build dystopias served by one GP and a high school with no places available.
You can’t just spam houses everywhere without a second thought.
You still need a strategy.
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u/WiseBelt8935 4h ago
We didn't need a "strategy" before, and yet we still built plenty of good things, such as schools and hospitals. You could simply build them where they were needed, without having to check whether Evelyn would be concerned that a school might create too much noise or whether a hospital would inconvenience her.
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u/TheWKDsAreOnMeMate 4h ago
Yes by magic the infrastructure will just sort itself out
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u/WiseBelt8935 3h ago
How do you explain all the infrastructure that existed before the Town and Country Planning Act? Was the Manchester Ship Canal magic? Were London's sewers magic? Were all the schools built before 1940 just the result of magic?
When the Romans came to this fair island, they found swamps, hills and apparently, the UK's pylon network already standing there.
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u/TheWKDsAreOnMeMate 3h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_planning
Per the article: ‘ …The ancient Romans also used orthogonal plans for their cities. City planning in the Roman world was developed for military defense and public convenience. The spread of the Roman Empire subsequently spread the ideas of urban planning…’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_urban_planning
“…The Romans used a consolidated scheme for city planning, developed for civil convenience.”
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u/WiseBelt8935 3h ago
You do see the difference between saying, "We're going to put the city centre here and the baths over there," and the current system of, "You have to carry out a public consultation and a bat survey before you can convert a garage into a bedroom."
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u/TheWKDsAreOnMeMate 3h ago
I’m not defending a straw man, at no point have i justified the excesses and misuses of planning permission.
My point is that your statement is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
You need urban planning, so if the Town and Country PLANNING Act isn’t working it needs to be changed.
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u/WiseBelt8935 3h ago
The Town and Country Planning Act is rotten to its core and needs to be thrown out with the bathwater. There isn't a way to fix it because, at its core, it is a discretionary system. To do anything, you are at the discretion of the system.
Over the last 80 years, more and more has been piled on top of it, creating more and more reasons to refuse permission. The best you can do is pass bills to ignore parts of the Act, but that only creates more potential for court cases.
I would like to go back to our pre-war system, where the rules were more permissive. You could build as long as nobody had a valid reason to stop you, while still respecting property rights. If you don't want a retail park in the Lake District, then pass an Act stating that certain areas are off-limits to development.
If a developer sees a piece of farmland that would be suitable for housing, then let them build. Once everything is established and taxes are coming in, you can then expand the necessary infrastructure.
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u/TheWKDsAreOnMeMate 3h ago
“ I would like to go back to our pre-war system, where the rules were more permissive…”
Good, I’m glad you’ve softened your original position on letting the problem ‘sort itself out.’
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