Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Angela Rayner has reiterated the government’s commitment to ‘record levels of housebuilding’ and funding plans to support affordable housing.
Responding to questions in a Commons debate, Rayner stressed the ‘decisive action’ being taken to increase the supply of new homes, together with ‘bold reforms’ of the planning system and ‘the biggest increase in social house building in a generation’.
Attacking the housing record of the previous government, which she described as an ‘absolute mess’, Rayner said:
“Our country is in the midst of a housing crisis, decades in the making. As our plan for change set out, the Government are committed to the biggest increase in social and affordable housing in a generation. We have already taken decisive action to increase the supply of new homes, with bold reforms to the planning system and the launch of the new homes accelerator programme, which will unblock thousands of homes stuck in the planning system.”
Rejecting claims from Conservative MP Katie Lam that targets in London had been reduced, the deputy prime minister continued:
“We are asking London to deliver record levels of house building. Our revised standard method sets the housing need for London at nearly 88,000 homes per year. The previous Government artificially boosted targets for London using an extra 35% urban uplift. That resulted in a target of nearly 100,000 homes—a third of the previous national target—which could not be justified. The London Mayor has started building more new council homes than at any time since the 1970s. He is getting on with building homes while the Tories have failed and are the blockers.”
The suggestion from Conservative MP Graham Stuart that the Government had reduced its target from 1.5 million new homes to 1.3 million was also rejected by Rayner, who stressed:
“Our other plans, including the new homes accelerator programme, the money that we have invested since then, and the changes in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, mean that the number will increase, and we will meet our 1.5 million homes target. I do not think that I can put it much clearer than that.”
The government’s commitment to housing includes £2 billion for 18,000 new social and affordable homes, £1.29 billion for the warm homes social housing fund, £800 million in top-ups to the current affordable homes programme, and £2 billion for regeneration projects that the government says will add to the total number of available homes. A further £600 million will deliver training for new construction jobs.
