There’s good reasons to be optimistic that the next government will finally get a grip on the housing crisis. First, all parties have made manifesto commitments on building targets. Second, Labour voters are much more positively disposed to development, argues Shreya Nanda
The housing crisis is a key issue facing the country at this election. The most common living arrangement for 18-34-year-olds is now with their parents. And stagnant economic growth is a threat to living standards. Increasing the supply of housing – of all tenures – is a crucial part of addressing this. So what do the main parties’ manifestos have to say on the subject?
Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives all have annual housing supply targets – at 300,000, 380,000 and 320,000 per year, respectively. These are in the same region as the current government’s housing target of 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s. We are currently falling short – in 2023, just under 190,000 were built.
But even 380,000 homes per year is well short of what we should be aiming for. The Centre for Cities puts the UK’s housing backlog at 4.3m homes (or 860,000 per year over a Parliament) just to bring us in-line with countries across Europe – many of which are facing housing crises of their own.
Caution on the issue is understandable – the politics of building new housing is notoriously difficult. The current government attempted to increase housing supply by imposing mandatory local housing targets and loosening planning restrictions in designated “renewal” and “growth” zones. They then scrapped these plans after a backlash from Conservative MPs in the shies; in particular, there was concern that these measures had been responsible for the Conservatives’ loss in the 2021 Chesham and Amersham by-election to the Liberal Democrats.
Will the next government face the same barriers to pushing housing though? One difference is that any reforms it attempts will have been included in a general election manifesto. Labour are pledging to build on “grey belt” land, create a new generation of new towns, and reimpose mandatory local housing targets. The Liberal Democrats have pledged to build ten new garden cities; while the Conservatives have promised to create a new fast-track route for homes in large cities.
Another factor is the distribution of support for new housing across the country. Yougov polling shows that Labour voters are significantly more likely to support new housing, including in their local area, than the general population; while Liberal Democrat voters are slightly more likely, and Conservative voters are less likely than average to support it. Work by professor Ben Ansell on the estimated geographical distribution of support for new housing also shows a clear link between support for new housing and Labour’s electoral performance in 2019. By contrast, Chesham and Amersham comes 495th out of 650 constituencies in its estimated support for new housing. Labour voters are more likely than average to privately rent, and less likely to own outright. If Labour forms the next government, as seems likely on current polling, then the pressures it faces will be different to those faced by a Conservative or Liberal Democrat government.
Finally, action on devolution to metro mayors and others provides a potential route to increasing housing supply. While the Conservative manifesto talks about continuing the government’s current devolution proposals and applying more pressure to London’s mayor to deliver housing, Labour has proposed to devolve and consolidate new powers on housing and planning.
Strong action on housing supply is needed. The politics of achieving this deserve careful thought, but there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about the ability of a future government to meet this goal.
Shreya Nanda is a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation