Builders To Prepare For Labour’s 1.5m Home Plan 

Builders, developers and other tradesmen could be set to have a busy few years ahead of them, so should stock up on box profile roofing sheets while they can. 

The previous government aimed to build 300,000 new houses a year by the mid-2020s but, according to statistics, failed to reach their ambitious goal, building just 234,000 a year before their term came to an end. 

Despite this, the Conservatives did meet their target to develop one million new homes from 2019, with government analysis showing they built 1,001,000 new properties during parliament. 

Now the UK has an entirely different party in government with Labour, tradespeople can still be confident their schedules will remain full. 

This is because Labour has announced its Plan for Change to build 1.5 million new homes and will overhaul the planning system to speed up delivery of these properties.

Currently, the long list of statutory consultees, which include Sport England, The Gardens Trust, and Theatres Trust, submit their input into planning decisions. This can cause significant delays to developments, which housing secretary Angela Raynor says is “harming our efforts to build the homes people desperately need”. 

It also has an impact on trades, as they are unable to complete as many jobs due to unnecessary delays. 

Disagreements between the consultees can cause a lot of barriers for developments, as well as increased costs and a level of uncertainty. This is not good for the sector, as well as homeowners or tenants.

More than 300 applications over the last three years received so many disagreements from the consultees that they had to be handed over to the Secretary of State to handle instead, demonstrating how red tape has stood in the way of useful developments in the past.