Chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to announce today that she will bring back compulsory housebuilding targets as part of the new Government’s efforts to deliver more housing.
Speaking to business leaders at the Treasury later today, the new Chancellor will promise to focus on kickstarting economic growth in part by overhauling the planning system to speed up the delivery of more housing.
Labour are set to reintroduce compulsory housebuilding targets, encourage development of poor-quality areas in the green belt known as ‘grey belt’ land, and make extra funds available for hundreds of new planning officers.
Ms Reeves will tell business leaders: ‘Our manifesto was clear: ‘Sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people.
‘Where previous governments have been unwilling to take the difficult decisions - I will deliver. It is now a national mission. There is no time to waste.’
Andrew Carter, chief executive of Centre for Cities, said: 'The Chancellor’s proposals to boost housebuilding are hugely positive, particularly as they explicitly link housebuilding and development with economic growth at the national level.
'To overcome the poor performance on economic growth in recent years that the Chancellor laid out, higher rates of housebuilding have to become the norm. We need a solution that’s proportionate to the huge scale of the UK’s housing backlog, which has grown over time to 4.3 million missing homes.
'If these announcements mark the start of a longer term agenda for the UK to catch up with leading G7 countries’ rates of economic growth and levels of productivity, then eventually we will need bigger reforms to move to a more permissive, rules-based, G7-style planning system. This alone will create the conditions for a sustained increase in housebuilding and development.'
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