Angela Rayner doubts 1.5m new homes. Half of past admissions led to a rewrite.
Angela Rayner told the BBC on 13 September there is only a slim chance of 1.5m new homes in England by the next election. She said the target stays.
What happened
Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, told the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on that there is only a slim chance the government will build 1.5 million homes in England by the next election, blaming the Iran war and construction costs, while insisting the target is not being dropped.
Angela Rayner, the housing secretary, said on Sunday morning that the target of 1.5 million homes stays in place. She called it a stretch target, one that is hard to reach, and said she was not giving up. She pointed to a £10bn programme for social and affordable homes and to housing starts rising 15 per cent last year.
The Guardian recorded it as the first time she has accepted she could miss the target since she returned to the job under Andy Burnham.
The target needs about 300,000 homes a year. England has not built at that rate in decades. BBC Verify counted energy certificates and put new homes at about 203,000 in the year to . Official figures show 208,600 net new homes in 2024-25, down 6 per cent.
Housing starts were 33,960 in January to , down 9 per cent on the quarter before and up 18 per cent on the year. Starts for the year to March were 130,170, up 15 per cent, while finished homes fell 6 per cent to 143,110. The next quarterly figures are due on .
The target has been softening for a year. Steve Reed, who held the job between Rayner’s two spells, said in December that a sharp late rise would be needed and that he expected the target to be just met.
Burnham has put council housing first. The first £10bn of the £39bn programme, announced on , pays for 70,000 homes outside London, and the Conservatives called it unfunded. The last forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility had net new homes falling to 215,000 before rising to 305,000 in 2029-30.
John Healey presents the Budget on . Before it, the Commons breaks for the party conferences on and returns on .
Sources: BBC (2, 3), Guardian, GOV.UK (2, 3, 4), UK Parliament
The Pattern
Four of eight ministers who admitted a miss saw the target changed. We looked for UK ministers since 2014 who said in public, before the deadline, that a main government target would probably be missed or had already been missed. We found eight. In four of them, a published document or Commons statement changed, redefined or dropped the target within 60 days.
Show the other 6 cases
The Read
History is split, but the details lean towards the target surviving to . Four of the eight admissions led to a formal rewrite within 60 days, but in each of those four the minister had the replacement ready on the day. Sunak had a new flight date, Gove had advisory targets in his letter, May had a new exit date and Javid had a white paper. Rayner brought no replacement and said the target stays, like the four cases where nothing changed. So the market opens at 35, below history, and the Budget is the only planned document that could change it. A second record is harder on ministers: five of the eight left the job within a year, though three of those five are Sunak losing one election.
The strongest case against is Gove. In a housing secretary gave way on a housing number under pressure, and within 17 days his department had a consultation that redefined it. A Budget is a bigger document than a consultation. It could restate the promise as a ten-year or UK-wide count without anyone calling it a retreat. History is wrong if the Budget red book or a Commons statement carries such a change by . The starts market could turn on a revision of a few hundred homes in the June quarter figure, and the committee market fails if the committee stays with its high streets inquiry through its first week back.
Rayner spoke eleven days before the next housing figures and six weeks before the Budget. She blamed the Iran war and building costs and did not blame the planning reforms her own department wrote. Reed had already called the plan a hockey stick, with the rise coming late in the parliament. The Treasury wants a Budget built on fiscal discipline, as Healey has said, with no new housing spending beyond the £39bn programme. The Conservatives call that programme unfunded, and Kemi Badenoch has said Labour would not build many of the homes. In the market window the moves belong to the Chancellor, whose Budget papers are where a new definition would be printed, and to the Office for Budget Responsibility, whose forecast that day will carry its own housing number. The Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee returns with the Commons on .
Sources: Guardian (2, 3, 4, 5), GOV.UK (2, 3, 4), BBC (2, 3)
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