Phoebus comment on Chancellor's house-building announcement: "leaves some questions unanswered"

09 July 2024

Richard Pike, chief sales and marketing officer at Phoebus Software, said: “Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ announcement today leaves some questions unanswered. Planning issues, coupled with the manpower to actually build the houses is going to be a real challenge for Labour.

“Chancellor Reeves said that Labour will bring back compulsory housebuilding targets for councils, and yet Gove couldn’t make mandatory targets work and had to pull them.

“Reeves maintains that it will still be local authorities who make the call on what gets built and where, so will it really be any different for councils who don’t want to build and use the planning system to stop construction?

“Labour has pledged to build 1.5 million new homes – an average of 300,000 per year – over the course of the same parliament. This was also the Tories target – one they failed to meet every year, with 232,800 homes delivered last year.

“We can be hopeful, though, that the 300 new planning officers Labour has said they will fund, as well as a fresh approach to brown and ‘grey belt’ sites will help. It would also be a great thing if Chancellor Reeve’s pitch to investors today attracts significant investment in green industry and housebuilding. This will help kickstart the property market and the UK economy.”