Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s spring statement revealed that there are now expected to be 1.3 million cumulative net additions to the UK housing stock over the five-year period to March 2030.
In its election-winning manifesto last year, the Labour party promised 1.5 million new homes in England over that period. But even adding in the rest of the UK it is still set to fall short.
Reeves described the gap as “touching distance”.
The official forecast of 1.3 million new homes across the UK comes from the Office for Budget Responsibility’s latest economic and fiscal outlook.
“From a 12-year low in 2025-26, net additions to the UK housing stock are forecast to reach
305,000 a year by the end of the decade,” the OBR said. “From 2025-26 to 2029-30, we project around 1.3 million cumulative net additions to the housing stock.”
However, the OBR credits the government with stimulating what it expects to be substantial growth in house-building by revising the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF).
“We judge that the planning reforms incorporated in the revised NPPF will increase net additions by 170,000 across the forecast period,” the OBR said. “This is equivalent to a 0.5% increase in the housing stock in 2029-30. This increased house-building over the forecast period is driven mainly by requirements for local authorities to release land to meet development needs as well as the strengthened presumption in favour of sustainable development which, if triggered, requires local authorities to release land for further development unless the adverse impacts of doing so significantly outweigh the benefits. Most of this increase takes place from 2027-28 as it takes time for developers to identify sites, local authorities to bring forward local plans, capacity constraints in the sector to be overcome, and additional houses to be built.”
While the OBR report credits the liberalising impact of planning reform, it should be noted that it appears to make light of capacity constraints in the house-building supply chain if it assumes they will all be overcome within the next three years.
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