Deputy PM Angela Rayner also pledged to free up some undeveloped green land for construction, a contentious issue in many rural areas of the UK
Britain’s new Labour government on Tuesday unveiled its plans to tackle the UK’s housing shortage.
The centre-left party won a landslide general election victory against the Conservatives earlier this month, returning to power for the first time since 2010.
In its pre-vote manifesto, Labour pledged to build 1.5 million new homes over the next five years.
Deputy PM Angela Rayner said the government would reintroduce mandatory housebuilding targets for local authorities that the Tories had scrapped.
She also pledged to free up some undeveloped green land for construction, a contentious issue in many rural areas of the UK.
Today I am setting out a radical plan to not only get the homes we desperately need, but also drive the growth, create jobs and breathe life back into towns and cities, she told parliament.
We are ambitious, and what I say won’t be without controversy, but this is urgent because this Labour government is not afraid to take on the tough choices needed to deliver for our country, she said.
Rayner accused the Conservatives of allowing the number of new homes to likely fall below 200,000 this year to appease “anti-housing” lawmakers in the party.
The government had targeted 300,000 new homes annually to keep up with demand.
Experts blame low housing stock, high property prices, expensive mortgages and unaffordable rents for causing UK’s housing crunch.
As per government statistics, there were over 1.2 million people on waiting lists for public housing in March 2022.
The number of people sleeping on the streets of London reached a record high of around 12,000, figures released last month by Homeless Link, the body for groups dealing with homelessness in England, showed.