Government announces plan for a long-term housing strategy

On 30 July, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Angela Rayner MP, delivered a statement in the House of Commons on “Building the homes we need” and announced the government’s intention to publish a long-term housing strategy.

Rayner's speech set out planning reforms, reintroduced mandatory housing targets and acknowledged the need for stability in social housing rent policy.

We have summarised key announcements from the speech below. 

Housing targets

Labour will “put people and country first” with mandatory local housing targets. However, Rayner stated this alone will be insufficient to meet ambition. The government will change the standard method on how to calculate housing need to better reflect the supply in communities. There will also be an uplift in areas where house prices are most out of step with local incomes.  

Green Belt

Labour will prioritise brownfield development but will also make strategic plans to review and release Green Belt land. When considering Green Belt development, grey belt areas will be prioritised. Encouragingly, the Secretary of State confirmed that any Green Belt development will follow their ‘golden rules’ and will therefore include targets of 50% affordable housing with a focus on social rent.   

Delivering affordable homes

The government recognised that the current Affordable Homes Programme is almost fully committed but has asked Homes England and the GLA to prioritise social rent when allocating the remainder of the Affordable Homes Programme funding.  

The Secretary of State recognised that councils and housing associations need support to build capacity and increase supply. She stated that the government would announce plans to ensure stability around social rents at the next fiscal event, as well as committing to setting out details of future government investment in social and affordable housing as part of the next spending review.

Planning

The Secretary of State announced the launch of the National Policy Planning Framework (NPPF) consultation which will run until the autumn. She also emphasised the importance of local planning and set out steps to support local authorities to implement upcoming NPPF reforms. The consultation included announcements on a number of our key asks, including removing the priority given to First Homes and confirming that the government will not be implementing the Infrastructure Levy.  

The Secretary of State finished her speech by saying that these are initial steps, and that the government is committed to a long-term housing strategy.

We strongly welcome the government’s commitment to reintroducing more ambitious mandatory housing targets, recognising the importance of social rented homes, and to overhauling the planning system, which we have long been calling for.  

Next steps

These changes are an important first step to increasing supply, and we agree with the Deputy Prime Minister that to reach the government’s target of 1.5 million new homes over this parliament, we must significantly increase the supply of social and affordable housing. We will continue to raise the need for long-term funding and are making our asks for the Spending Review clear. Full details of our asks can be found in our social housing renewal plan.

The Chancellor announced that the next Spending Review and Budget will take place on Wednesday 30 October.