Housing targets and planning reforms: laying the foundations for economic growth?

The Labour government has made housing reform a key priority, with the recent King’s Speech setting out the government’s ambition to “get Britain building”, and to boost protection for private renters. Following on from this, Angela Rayner (Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government) has just announced mandatory housing targets to facilitate the delivery of 1.5 million homes in England over the next five years.

Overview of the King’s Speech and new housing targets

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is aimed at “unlocking more housing and infrastructure across the country and supporting sustained economic growth”. One of the government’s goals is to accelerate housebuilding and infrastructure delivery via:

• Streamlining the delivery process for critical infrastructure, including accelerating upgrades to the national grid and boosting renewable energy, and simplifying the consenting process for major infrastructure projects.
• Improving local planning decision making by modernising planning committees.
• Increasing local planning authorities’ capacity to improve performance and decision making, to provide more predictable services to developers and investors. 

Alongside the housing targets announcement, the government has set out further planning updates, including its:

• Intention to introduce a universal system of strategic planning across England to deliver large-scale growth.
• Support for mixed use sites, which can include different ownership and rental tenures, e.g. rented affordable housing and build to rent. 

The government clearly sees ambitious planning reform as a tool for spurring economic growth, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer explaining shortly before the election that “it’s only by reforming our planning regulations that we can unlock the economic potential of the country”. 

Meanwhile, the Renters’ Rights Bill sets out the government’s plans to boost private renters’ security, including by:

• Abolishing section 21 no fault evictions. 
• Strengthening tenants’ rights and protections, e.g. so that tenants are able to challenge rent increases “designed to force them out by the back door” and in order to “end the practice of rental bidding wars”.
• Making it illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants who are in receipt of benefits or with children. 

The view from the property sector 

Developers and build to rent companies have welcomed Labour’s ambitions for planning reform overall, as these policies may provide a more certain environment to invest in the building of residential properties across the UK. The government’s aim to improve the efficiency of local planning authorities’ decision making has also been received positively. Currently only 1% of local planning authorities determine more than 60% of major planning applications within the statutory 13-week period, and this delay causes commercial uncertainty.

The house building sector has signalled its support for the newly announced housing targets, with the Home Builders Federation publishing a statement backing the targets and acknowledging that “this is a moment where we can work together with government to address the national housing emergency and ensure that all aspects of the housing market are functioning more effectively”. 

Reforms concerning private renters’ rights have proved more controversial, with commercial landlords emphasising the need for them to be able to address poor tenant behaviour effectively. To avoid going to court to resolve disputes, we may see landlords and tenants increasingly turn to alternative dispute resolution.