Don’t Stop Believing
Will Labour reach its housing target?
Posted by Emma Bishton 9/8/25
I like to listen to the radio in the car. Which means, on a long drive, that I might hear the same news headlines many times in the course of an afternoon, and that is what happened last Friday. At lunchtime, one of the headlines ran something along the lines of ‘The number of new houses built in Labour’s first year in office fell compared to the previous year’. By the time the 6’o clock news bulletin came on there was equal weight in the headline to the fact that whilst the number of new houses ready to live in had fallen under Labour, new applications for planning permission this year showed an increase. Nice of them to add some balance. But a bit late.
Yes, Labour have now been in office for a year, and the number of houses completed in that time has fallen. So the story isn’t wrong. And they have pledged to build a lot more houses, so the implication – that Labour in government are already failing to meet their housing targets – lands easily. But as anyone knows, building decent houses takes time. (Unless of course you build them out of sticks or straw, and we know how that story ends.) And what was not in the headline is that Labour being in office and the number of houses completed aren’t causally linked – the number of completions has actually been falling since 2023, under the Tories.
Being an ordinary Labour member over the last year has had its frustrations. There are times when the government we still trust to deliver seems caught in a constant game of Whac-A-Mole with the public, the press, and (worse of all), sometimes with itself. But that’s to underestimate the scale of the challenge, which concerns not only the facts (like an ongoing drop in housing completions), but also the pervasive sense of pessimism that any government even wants to achieve its stated aims (let alone be capable of delivering them).
The responsibility for delivering on Labour’s housing targets sits with Angela Rayner’s department of Housing, Communities & Local Government. Angela Rayner – like Ed Milliband, whose Department for Energy Security & Net Zero is responsible for making sure those new homes are cheaper to heat and greener to live in – is focused and practical. (If you want proof of her ability to drive change, listen to this podcast.) She’s been absolutely clear about the need to stick to Labour’s housing target of building 1.5 million new homes by 2029. In the right places, too – that is to say, in the regions and cities where there aren’t enough homes now to meet the established need. And by the way that’s 1.5 million homes of different sorts, not 1.5 million large detached houses. (These things might sound obvious, but they clearly aren’t to some people!)
It’s a high target, even before considering the backdrop – a Tory legacy of falls in house-building. It’s a huge challenge, even with the changes already underway. And even when driven by the powerhouse that is Angela Rayner. It’s tricky policy to deliver because it’s long overdue and requires multiple parts of the system to pull together, and detailed processes to be devised and implemented. But those aren’t reasons not to pursue it – they’re reasons to push forward – and the government is doing just that. For instance, it has recently chosen West Suffolk College in Bury St Edmunds to receive extra funding and become one of ten Construction Technical Excellence Colleges. Together, these colleges will train an extra 40,000 people by 2029 in the vital skills needed by the construction industry. That’s about making sure there are enough people in each region to build the houses. And as we heard last week, planning applications in Labour’s first year of office have increased.
So is there reason in my optimism that the headlines this time next year will report an increase in the number of new houses ready to live in? Yes there is.
Click here for a brief profile of Emma Bishton.