A Year of Change: A Look at Labour’s First Year in Government – A Short and Ignoble History of Missed Housing Targets

According to a recent Ipsos poll, 62% of Brits feel the country is on the wrong housing policy track, above the global average of 52%. This is despite the Government’s ambitious goal of delivering 1.5m new homes over this parliament.

We love housing targets in Britain, almost as much as we love not hitting them. Indeed – in the G7 it is only Canada that commits to numerical goals, with our global peers preferring to rely on regional targets, funding programmes and planning frameworks.

How realistic are these targets and what can history tell us about why they are so often missed?

In short: not very and money. If you want a longer answer, read on:

Post-war boomer energy and delivery

Housing targets became a central part of British policy following the devastation of World War II. The 1945 Labour government launched a massive state-led housebuilding programme to deliver “Homes for Heroes,” using local authorities and new towns as the primary delivery vehicles.

By the early 1950s, the Conservative government, with Harold Macmillan as Housing Minister, pledged to build 300,000 homes a year. This was one of the earliest clear numerical housing targets – and critically, it was met. Between 1951 and 1955, combined public and private completions consistently exceeded this target, with local authorities and new towns alone delivering an average of 188,000 homes per year.

This success was largely due to a combination of central funding, land assembly powers, and political consensus, supported by a government unafraid of direct intervention in the housing market.

Swinging sixties: big promises, semi-detached results

In 1964, not to be outdone by the Tories, Harold Wilson’s Labour government set a national target of 500,000 homes per year. Although private sector activity increased, delivery fell short. While completions in England did peak at 425,000 in 1968, this level was not sustained.

This was the beginning of a long decline in local authority housebuilding – one that would accelerate in the 1980s with the introduction of Right to Buy, which saw millions of council homes sold without sufficient replacement.

Limping to the Millenium: rise of the planning frameworks

By the 1990s, direct public sector involvement in housebuilding had largely faded. The housing agenda became increasingly reliant on the private market, with targets framed through Regional Spatial Strategies and later Local Development Frameworks.

In the noughties, John Prescott’s Sustainable Communities Plan introduced significant regional housing targets, particularly in growth areas like the Thames Gateway. But delivery remained inconsistent, and many local authorities struggled to meet these targets, hindered by planning delays, infrastructure constraints, and local resistance.

Recent history: failure to launch

London has had its own disappointing trajectory. Under successive mayors, the London Plan has set increasingly punchy targets. Boris Johnson’s 2016 Plan aimed for 42,000 homes per year. Sadiq Khan’s 2021 version increased that to 52,000, with aspirations of up to 66,000 homes annually.

The cliché runs: aim for the stars, hit the moon. In London, we haven’t even made it into the atmosphere yet. According to Trust for London, the capital averaged just 37,768 completions a year between 2020/21 and 2022/23, and only eight of the 32 boroughs met their housing targets. 2025 numbers are even more damning, with 23 out of the 32 boroughs reporting no housing starts this year and half of the boroughs having no plans to deliver homes in 2027 and 2028.

Nationally, governments under Theresa May and Boris Johnson reaffirmed a target of 300,000 homes per year. But again, delivery hasn’t matched rhetoric: in 2023/24, completions were around 184,000.

How to catch up

Starmer and Rayner’s target is to deliver 1.5m homes in England by the end of the parliament. It will not come as a surprise to report that we are running nowhere near that pace. In fact, Savills forecast that delivery is set to drop to as low as 160,000 a year. We aren’t running, we are crawling.

To meet the 1.5m goal, delivery would need to rise by over 60% from current levels, with annual starts nearly 400,000 homes by 2027.

London: misplaced Khanfidence?

Khan has claimed record housebuilding under his mayoralty – and to an extent, that’s true. According to the Greater London Authority (GLA), London has delivered more homes under his leadership than any previous mayor, averaging over 36,000 homes a year. Better than his predecessors, but still some way off his own target. Why?

With land constraints, planning complexities, and affordability issues, London continues to struggle with:

• Brownfield dependency – limited capacity without Green Belt review
• Viability issues – high costs undermine delivery of affordable homes
• Planning backlog – slow decision-making across multiple boroughs
• Public sector constraints – councils need more funding and powers to deliver directly

Days of halcyon past

In the 1950s and 60s, governments hit housing targets because it was the builder. Post-war governments prioritised land acquisition, new towns, and upfront infrastructure investment. By contrast, modern planning systems are fragmented, slow, and overly reliant on Section 106 deals to fund infrastructure after the fact. Whilst setting targets is politically popular, without funding, planning reform, and delivery capacity, they remain aspirational.

To stand any chance of meeting the 1.5m national target – and London’s share of it – several steps are essential:

• Planning reform: Faster, more strategic planning decisions with better-resourced local authorities
• Cultural mind shift: Depoliticise NIMBYism, make everyone a housing ally
• Public investment: Enable councils and Homes England to build again at scale
• Green Belt conversation: Especially around stations and urban fringe sites
• Skills and workforce: Close construction labour shortages

Our short romp through modern British history shows that targets can be hit. The post-war period proved that ambitious housebuilding is possible when governments are bold, willing to lead and crucially, spend money.

Unless Starmer and co manifest that Post War Boomer Energy, today’s targets are likely to remain just that – targets, not outcomes.