Sunak tilts housing drive to inner cities to meet 1mn new homes pledge

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The government will on Monday announce plans to focus on building homes in city centres and liberalising planning restrictions, as it seeks to meet its manifesto promise to build 1mn new homes in England by the end of the current parliament.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak will outline his strategy to boost the country’s supply of housing stock and cut the red tape that has been criticised as hindering much needed development.

Efforts to target housebuilding at inner cities through urban regeneration come following pushback from Tory backbenchers in prosperous southern constituencies that planning reforms could lead to excessive building.

Sunak will say that the government will not build new homes “by concreting over the countryside”, adding: “Our plan is to build the right homes where there is the most need and where there is local support, in the heart of Britain’s great cities.”

Michael Gove, minister for levelling up, housing and communities, is on Monday set to announce new plans to reform the planning system.

The proposals will include making it easier to convert shops, agricultural buildings and disused warehouses into homes, as well as reducing red tape for home extensions and loft conversions. 

As part of efforts to tackle a building backlog, Gove will announce a new £24mn fund and set up a “super-squad” of planners and experts charged with clearing delays in big developments, which will initially be deployed in Cambridge.

Stuart Baillie, head of planning at property consultancy Knight Frank, said the government’s proposals were unlikely to have a “meaningful impact” on housing supply.

He added that the changes would not get to the heart of issues facing the UK’s “overburdened and under-resourced planning system”, and would probably create only hundreds of new homes when the country needed thousands.

Former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss both sought to introduce supply-side planning reforms in the hopes that they would tackle severe housing shortages and boost growth, but the moves faced a string of rebellions from Conservative backbench MPs. 

Gove wrote to MPs late last year reassuring them that the government’s manifesto target — to build 300,000 new homes a year in the UK — was advisory and not mandatory. 

Lisa Nandy, shadow housing secretary, described the proposed reforms as “empty promises” at a time when the country needs “bold action to get Britain building”. She noted that housing construction was on course to reach its lowest rate since the second world war.

The announcements come after Gove argued that the government should relax some of its green policies in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph — a stance that has gained traction among the right flank of the party following the Tories’ by-election win in Uxbridge and South Ruislip last week. The vote had been seen as a referendum on plans to expand a flagship clean air policy. 

Gove warned that his party needed to avoid a “religious crusade” that could cause a backlash among voters, including the policy to ban landlords from renting out their homes unless they pay for green upgrades such as heat pumps.