Delays in publishing the government’s Long-Term Housing Strategy, first announced in July 2024, have left members of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee ‘deeply disappointed’, with MPs in the dark over how the government plans to deliver 1.5 million new homes by 2029.
The report from the committee is critical of what it describes as an unwillingness on the part of the government to ‘engage with us on the development of the Strategy’, or provide any updates or timescales on publication. A long-term housing strategy was due to have been published alongside the Spending Review in the Spring of 2025, but the committee says it now understands it will be published ‘later this year’.
The report – ‘Delivering 1.5 million new homes: Land Value Capture’ – welcomes the government’s ambitious plans to build 1.5 million homes in this Parliament – a manifesto promise. Despite concerns about the pace of progress, the minister for housing and planning, Matthew Pennycook, told the committee the government had inherited a housing market downturn and there would be a lag between increasing housing permissions and homes being built. In oral evidence provided to the committee, he explained there were no annual targets, and said house building would be slow initially before accelerating rapidly.
In June 2025, MHCLG’s ‘indicators of new supply’ statistics estimated that 186,600 net additional homes were completed in England between the start of the current Parliament on 9 July 2024, and 15 June 2025. MHCLG also announced that in the year to 31 March 2025, housebuilding starts decreased from the previous year in all regions except the South East of England, where they remained similar to the previous year. The largest percentage decreases from the previous year were in London (-73%) and in the North West of England (-25%). Pennycook said planning applications in the first quarter of this year rose by 6% compared to the same quarter in 2024.
Contributors to the Housing Committee’s report expressed their own scepticism of the viability of delivering 1.5 million homes in this Parliament. Dr Victoria Hills, then chief executive of the Royal Town Planning Institute, told the committee a 10-year term was more likely to strengthen sector capacity and deliver new homes. Anna Clarke, director of policy and public affairs at the Housing Forum, a membership body representing organisations from across the housing sector, added there was wide acknowledgement 1.5 million homes was ‘challenging, and probably (an) unlikely target to be met in those five years’.
Others expressed concerns about the way in which the housing would be delivered and whether it would solve the crisis facing social housing and tackle changing population dynamics. In March 2025, Muyiwa Oki, then president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, emphasised the ‘real and growing need’ for social housing, highlighting at that time 1.3 million households were on local authority waiting lists.
Professor Julienne Meyer CBE, chair of the Older People’s Housing Taskforce, said she feared the strategy would ‘centre solely on the ambition to deliver 1.5 million new homes, rather than addressing the specific and growing needs of an older and more diverse population’.
Summing up, the report said it was critical a ‘clear strategy’ was delivered and further delays served only to jeopardise the target. The Committee called on the government to bring forward its Long-Term Housing Strategy without further delay, outlining the policies which will improve planning, and be clear about how the net additional dwellings would contribute to overall housing supply and the 1.5 million homes stated objective.
The report added:
“If the Ministry is unable to supply this, the Government must make an oral statement to the House to confirm how many new homes it will deliver by the end of this Parliament.”
See the report: ‘Delivering 1.5 million new homes: Land Value Capture‘
