Rayner announces 370,000 homes target amid industry support of reform

The government has confirmed it will reintroduce mandatory housing targets, with Angela Rayner, deputy prime minister and housing secretary, stating a yearly housing goal of 370,000 homes in her announcement on the updated National Planning Policy Framework today (July 30).

In her statement to the House of Commons, Rayner said that her government would change the method of calculating local housing need to better reflect “the urgency of supply for local areas”.

This will be based on requiring local authorities to plan for homes according to the size of their existing communities, “and it will incorporate an uplift where house prices are most out of step with local incomes”.

The housing secretary said Labour would not “rely on outdated data”, referring to the previous government’s abolished housing need method, based on household projections from 2014.

Rayner said: “Whilst the previous government watered down housing targets, caving into their anti-growth backbenchers, this Labour government is taking the tough choices, putting people and country first.

“For the first time we will make local housing targets mandatory, requiring local authorities to use the same method to work out how many homes to build.”

This revised method would increase the …