UK housing minister faces reality: Million-home promise harder than expected
Labourʼs housing target of 1.5 million new homes hits unexpected roadblocks. Planning minister **Matthew Pennycook** admits challenges while defending governments commitment to solve housing issues
Matthew Pennycook‚ UKʼs planning minister made a straight-forward statement about Labourʼs house-building plans: its gonna be harder than they thought. During nov-21 committee meeting he spoke about the governments mega-project to build 1.5M homes by twenty-thirty
The minister (who represents Greenwich and Woolwich) pointed to some not-so-great numbers from the Budget office: house-building is gonna drop under 200k units this year. “Were in a trough weʼve got to pull ourselves out of that trough“ he explained while avoiding year-by-year goals
Pennycook stayed positive about the big picture though: “Im convinced its deliverable“. He talked about how they couldʼve picked an easy-peasy target but that wouldnt fix Englandʼs deep-rooted housing problems; the current goal is what he calls “incredibly stretching“
Real-estate pros arenʼt buying it. Knight Frankʼs latest check-up shows almost zero house-builders think Keir Starmerʼs team can hit their target in next 5 years. Savills (another big-name property firm) did the math: theyʼd need to sell about 200k homes to private buyers yearly — something that hasnt happened since the swinging sixties
