Government faces nine ‘major obstacles’ to delivering 1.5 million homes, says report

A new report – published on the day of the government’s spending review – sets out the biggest challenges to Keir Starmer’s aim of delivering 1.5m homes by the end of this parliament. 

The second report from the Radix Big Tent Housing Commission, identifies nine “blocks” to meeting the government’s aims, including the conditional nature of development finance, barriers to institutional investment, the lack of infrastructure including capacity for utilities like sewage and water and the continuing deadening impact of some aspects of regulation and planning.

Issues it highlighted were the lack of developer diversity, with a handful of major companies dominating the industry and declining levels of SME developers; a shortage of construction workers; and the “unpredictable costs” and “storm of unviability” of the Build to Rent sector for multi-person dwellings. It also cited the lack of strategic planning as among the major challenges facing the industry, with only 30% of local plans up-to-date.

The report calls for less rigidity when setting the requirement for different tenures on sites, safe streamlining of tall building regulations, action to stablise local government decision-making, an enlarged and longer-term affordable homes programme and quicker decisions on social housing funding, rent settlement and convergence. It also calls for a reclassing of affordable housing as infrastructure - echoing calls made by Housing Today and the G15 in the inaugural State of the Capital report earlier this year.

Alex Notay, chair of the commission, said: “Housing is a complex ecosystem and previous attempts to remove the obstacles to development have often failed or produced unintended consequences, as they have been introduced in isolation or not been considered holistically.

“In contrast, this short paper is intended highlight how to catalyse and unblock investment and introduce much-needed dynamism into the sector, by proposing a number of practical and affordable measures that could be acted upon immediately.

“We hope this paper will help inform the government’s thinking as we move beyond the spending review, to maintain momentum toward 1.5 million new homes by the end of the parliament.”

The Radix Big Tent Commission includes property professionals, developers, investors, planners, academics and others, and is supported by Chapman Taylor, GAA, the National Residential Landlords Association, Shoosmiths, the Vistry Group and the Wates Group. It was launched in March 2024 by chair Dame Kate Barker.

Radix Big Tent is a think tank that describes itself as non-partisan.