Housing secretary Angela Rayner has said that delivering social and affordable homes at scale is her “number one priority” ahead of a significant announcement on planning expected this week.
In an article in The Guardian on the weekend, Rayner said that the state of housing in the UK was “even more grim than we imagined” before Labour came to power, with the shortage of social and affordable housing “particularly acute”.
The housing secretary said that investment in social and affordable housing was a “crucial step on the path to 1.5million homes” and key to “ensure everyone has a secure roof over their head.”
She went on to say that Labour will “inject confidence and certainty into the social housing system, so that councils and private providers can get back to building.”
In the article, Rayner stated that the Affordable Homes Programme launched by the Conservative government in 2020 looked likely to fall way short of its 180,000-home goal and deliver less than a quarter of the target.
The comments precede the publishing of Labour’s reformed National Planning Policy Framework, which is expected to be announced to MPs tomorrow and is designed, Rayner says, with the goal of “kickstarting the sector out of this slump”.
The new NPPF will include the new government’s approach to green belt development, providing further details on Labour’s focus on ‘grey belt’ land while setting out its “golden rules” for development, two pledges that featured heavily in the party’s pre-election manifesto.
Rayner said these changes would reverse “the damaging set of changes made last December when [the previous government] backed down in the face of vested interests, scrapped mandatory housing targets and torpedoed housebuilding rates”.
The housing minister continued to say: “We were elected on a mandate to build the homes Britain needs and take the tough choices to unblock the planning system and make it a reality. When it comes to housebuilding, we will no longer be asking ‘if’ but ‘how’.”
