A plague on all their houses

Rishi Sunak and Michael Gove are facing fierce criticism after their embarrassing climbdown on housing targets to appease hard-bargaining Tory rebels.

The Priced Out campaign, which lobbies the government to ensure the building of more affordable homes, said it was an “incredibly worrying” development, as the target was “a key tool to get the houses we need”.

Housebuilding groups also slammed the watering down of the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill today, with the National Federation of Builders (NFB) saying the move marked “the end of the government’s housing ambitions”. 

The Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has accused Sunak of killing off home ownership by failing to push through planning reform.

The criticism comes after Sunak and Gove, the levelling-up secretary, abolished the target to build 300,000 new homes a year in England in order to fend off an embarrassing backbench rebellion of nearly 50 Tory MPs, headed by grandees including Theresa Villiers and Bob Seely.

The target will now be “advisory”, meaning councils will be allowed to build fewer homes if they can show that hitting it would significantly alter the character of the area.

Scrapping housing targets in the middle of a national housing crisis isn’t a great look. But the Conservatives have faced pressure from voters in south-east England to reduce development in their local areas. Housebuilding targets were seen as a key factor in the party’s defeat at the hands of the Lib Dems in the Chesham and Amersham by-election last year. 

Villiers and co argued that top-down targets from government have a “toxic” impact on local authorities, undermine local control over planning decisions and put undue pressure for new homes where they are not wanted.

Indeed, many of the new housing developments being approved by local authorities to meet their targets are upsetting local communities – not always because they are being NIMBY-ish, but because there are not enough new facilities being built alongside the developments to cope with higher populations. What’s worse is that so many of the new homes are poorly designed, and being built on the edge of villages and towns without any careful planning.

Even so, compulsory housing targets – despite the Stalinist overtones – were seen by many Tory MPs as vital to boosting housing stock. It’s an idea backed up by a report from Lichfields which estimates that cancelling housing targets could see a drop in more than a third of all homes being built with as few as 140,000 homes per year.  

The Home Builders Federation has also warned that scrapping the 300,000 targets could lead to 100,000 fewer homes each year from the current total of 175,000. Other planning consultants argue the planning system will be plunged into chaos.

Sunak’s problems are far from over. He will now face a fierce backlash from the pro-housing faction of his party when the Bill returns to the Commons next week. And it seems likely that the PM will again back down over a brewing rebellion against the ban on onshore wind farms so as to avoid a humiliating defeat in the commons.

What’s perhaps most extraordinary about the latest ding-dong on housing – one of the most important issues of our day – is that it’s only now that government is having even the semblance of a serious debate after 12 years in power. Shame on all their houses.