Sunday, July 26, 2026
Reality hits the Burnham agenda
The paper says Raynor has denied she was abandoning the commitment, but compared achieving it to her chances of “running the London Marathon”:
Ms Rayner was reappointed housing minister – a job she had resigned from in 2025 after a row over whether she dodged stamp duty – when Andy Burnham became prime minister on Monday.
Ms Rayner said the housebuilding commitment was “very challenging” when it was made two years ago – and was even “more challenging” now as a result of increased construction costs and other factors which had had “a real negative impact”.
However, Ms Rayner was defiant after it was pointed out to her that in its first two years the government had built fewer than 300,000 homes – well short of the number needed to meet the 1.5 million target over five years.
She said: “I’m a straight-talking person, 1.5 million homes is a difficult target… but I’m going to keep it, I’m not going to be defeated.
”People have underestimated me all my life. If you tell me I cannot do something I will fight like hell to get it done.”
England saw 208,600 new homes built in 2024/25, a 6 per cent fall from the previous year and the lowest annual total since 2015/16, highlighting the scale of the challenge facing Labour.
Since Labour entered government in July 2024, around 392,400 net additional homes have been delivered, leaving ministers running at roughly two-thirds of the rate required to hit their goal by 2029.
The housebuilding industry has warned that without stronger consumer confidence, lower mortgage costs and healthier balance sheets across the construction sector, delivering the scale of housebuilding needed to meet Labour’s targets will remain an uphill battle.
Torrin Wilkins, director of Centre Think Tank, said the government should abolish stamp duty and impose binding housebuilding targets on councils to boost growth in the sector.
“The 1.5 million target comes up again and again. It’s almost turning into the tens of thousands immigration target in the Cameron era in that we never seem to be able to meet it and yet it’s constantly brought up,” he said, adding it was “unlikely” the government will meet its target if it does not change direction.
Mr Wilkins said the government should replace stamp duty with a proportional property tax to “unlock” housing sales and give developers incentive to build.
“Developers will look at who can afford homes in this local area and stamp duty is a real block,” he said.
“If Andy Burnham’s aim is breathing space, then abolishing stamp duty is probably the number one on that list because it allows people to upsize and downsize more easily and create that extra space.”
He also recommended councils and local authorities are handed binding targets with consequences for not meeting them.
“I think it would be a good step forward as well, just to really push that this isn’t an optional housing target. This is a national situation and a national emergency that needs to be taken seriously.”
This is an issue I highlighted back in October 2024, when the new Labour government was first embarking on this programme.
To be effective a significant proportion of these new homes need to be social housing, which means that the government must put up the money and work with local councils and housing associations to find the land, get the planning permissions through, with all the complications around that process on environmental sustainability and diversity, infrastructure etc, and then get the houses built.
The infrastructure, even on brown field sites, will be expensive enough without factoring in the build-cost. It is likely to be a two to three year process from start to completion for each site.
They also need to get a skilled workforce in place to undertake the construction, and where they are relying on planning gain for social homes, incentivise builders to bring forward their own plans. And of course for non-social and non-affordable homes they need house builders to see that they are getting sufficient profit on their investment.
This is the reality of just setting targets and hoping that they can be delivered. It means that even in 2024 building 1.5m homes by 2029 was not really possible. Where we are now, it just isn't going to happen.
They also need to get a skilled workforce in place to undertake the construction, and where they are relying on planning gain for social homes, incentivise builders to bring forward their own plans. And of course for non-social and non-affordable homes they need house builders to see that they are getting sufficient profit on their investment.
This is the reality of just setting targets and hoping that they can be delivered. It means that even in 2024 building 1.5m homes by 2029 was not really possible. Where we are now, it just isn't going to happen.
