Sir Brandon Lewis is a former Secretary of State, Lord Chancellor and Minister for Housing and Planning.
Last week’s housing figures should worry anyone who believes in a property-owning democracy. In the year to June, permission was granted for 212,000 homes – 12 per cent fewer than a year earlier. The Government’s own estimate is that England added 196,900 homes in 2025-26, down six per cent. To hit the 1.5 million target, we would need to be averaging 300,000 a year.
A welcome rise in starts last quarter does not change the picture. Nobody in the industry mistakes one good quarter for a recovery.
We have been here before and we know how to get out of it.
When we came into government in 2010, the planning system was a thicket. Regional strategies imposed targets from above and won consent from almost nobody. National policy sprawled across dozens of statements and guidance notes. We abolished the regional tier, gave communities neighbourhood plans so they could shape growth rather than simply resist it, and in 2012 published the National Planning Policy Framework: more than a thousand pages of national policy replaced by around fifty, built on a presumption in favour of sustainable development.
It worked. Net additions to the housing stock climbed from the trough of 2012-13 to almost 243,000 in 2019-20, the highest since records began in the early 1990s. Home ownership among 25- to 34-year-olds, which had collapsed from 59 per cent to 36 per cent in the decade to 2013-14, recovered to 45 per cent.
So what went wrong? Not one big mistake, but a thousand reasonable ones.
Each revision of the framework, each new duty, each additional consultee was defensible on its own terms. Biodiversity net gain, nutrient neutrality, the building safety updates, where nobody serious argues the objectives are wrong. But the cumulative effect has been to replant the thicket we cleared. The draft framework published last December runs to around 125 pages and came with a consultation asking 225 questions. That is not simplification.
The cost shows up everywhere.
The Home Builders Federation finds nine in ten council planning departments understaffed, and only one in five major applications decided within the statutory 13 weeks. Building safety approvals for taller blocks, which should take 12 weeks, were averaging 43 a year ago, 48 in London. Operational reform has since brought that down to around 13, which rather proves the point: delay is a choice, and it can be un-chosen.
The burden falls hardest on those least able to carry it. In 1988, small and medium-sized builders delivered around four in ten new homes; today it is closer to one in ten. Every month of delay ties up capital that a FTSE housebuilder can absorb and a family firm cannot. A system this complicated is not neutral. It is a barrier to entry, and Conservatives should call it one.
Why does this matter so much?
First, because housebuilding is one of the great engines of the economy. Lichfields’ work for the HBF found that around 240,000 homes in England and Wales generated £53.3 billion of output and supported 834,000 jobs. Few sectors reach so deeply into every region, every supply chain and every apprenticeship pipeline.
Second, because it is the surest route to social mobility we have. A secure home is the foundation on which families build everything else, and for millions it is the first step into owning capital. A generation that cannot buy will not stay Conservative for long and frankly, why should it?
The temptation for any government is to reach for one lever. The new Prime Minister’s stated answer is council homes. Social housing has an important place, but no single tenure and no single lever will close a gap of this size. We need a wholesale approach: reform on both the supply and demand sides, across every part of the market.
On supply, that means a genuinely short, rules-based national framework, so that a scheme which complies with the local plan gets permission without a fight. Planning departments properly resourced, with fees ringfenced to pay for them. Statutory consultees held to hard deadlines. A proportionate regime for small sites, so SME builders can come back into the market. And environmental obligations met strategically, at plan level, rather than relitigated site by site.
On demand, buyers need a realistic route to a deposit and a mortgage. Help to Buy had its critics, but its closure left a hole that has not been filled. A stamp duty regime that penalises moving freezes the chain at every link.
And across tenures, we should stop treating private sale, rental and affordable housing as rivals. Build-to-rent can underwrite faster build-out on large sites yet starts fell 79 per cent in the year to June, with investors spooked by talk of rent controls and tax changes. Capital is patient, but not masochistic; it needs stability. Housing associations, likewise, need certainty on rents and grant so they can borrow and build. They are delivery partners, not an afterthought.
None of this means tearing up the 2012 settlement. Its principles; a presumption in favour of sustainable development, local plans that mean something, communities with a real say remain right. It means stripping away what has grown up around them, and treating housing as the economic and social priority it is.
We cleared the thicket once. It has grown back. Britain needs a party willing to go back to the drawing board and the party of home ownership should be the one holding the pen.
Sir Brandon Lewis is a former Secretary of State, Lord Chancellor and Minister for Housing and Planning.
Last week’s housing figures should worry anyone who believes in a property-owning democracy. In the year to June, permission was granted for 212,000 homes – 12 per cent fewer than a year earlier. The Government’s own estimate is that England added 196,900 homes in 2025-26, down six per cent. To hit the 1.5 million target, we would need to be averaging 300,000 a year.
A welcome rise in starts last quarter does not change the picture. Nobody in the industry mistakes one good quarter for a recovery.
We have been here before and we know how to get out of it.
When we came into government in 2010, the planning system was a thicket. Regional strategies imposed targets from above and won consent from almost nobody. National policy sprawled across dozens of statements and guidance notes. We abolished the regional tier, gave communities neighbourhood plans so they could shape growth rather than simply resist it, and in 2012 published the National Planning Policy Framework: more than a thousand pages of national policy replaced by around fifty, built on a presumption in favour of sustainable development.
It worked. Net additions to the housing stock climbed from the trough of 2012-13 to almost 243,000 in 2019-20, the highest since records began in the early 1990s. Home ownership among 25- to 34-year-olds, which had collapsed from 59 per cent to 36 per cent in the decade to 2013-14, recovered to 45 per cent.
So what went wrong? Not one big mistake, but a thousand reasonable ones.
Each revision of the framework, each new duty, each additional consultee was defensible on its own terms. Biodiversity net gain, nutrient neutrality, the building safety updates, where nobody serious argues the objectives are wrong. But the cumulative effect has been to replant the thicket we cleared. The draft framework published last December runs to around 125 pages and came with a consultation asking 225 questions. That is not simplification.
The cost shows up everywhere.
The Home Builders Federation finds nine in ten council planning departments understaffed, and only one in five major applications decided within the statutory 13 weeks. Building safety approvals for taller blocks, which should take 12 weeks, were averaging 43 a year ago, 48 in London. Operational reform has since brought that down to around 13, which rather proves the point: delay is a choice, and it can be un-chosen.
The burden falls hardest on those least able to carry it. In 1988, small and medium-sized builders delivered around four in ten new homes; today it is closer to one in ten. Every month of delay ties up capital that a FTSE housebuilder can absorb and a family firm cannot. A system this complicated is not neutral. It is a barrier to entry, and Conservatives should call it one.
Why does this matter so much?
First, because housebuilding is one of the great engines of the economy. Lichfields’ work for the HBF found that around 240,000 homes in England and Wales generated £53.3 billion of output and supported 834,000 jobs. Few sectors reach so deeply into every region, every supply chain and every apprenticeship pipeline.
Second, because it is the surest route to social mobility we have. A secure home is the foundation on which families build everything else, and for millions it is the first step into owning capital. A generation that cannot buy will not stay Conservative for long and frankly, why should it?
The temptation for any government is to reach for one lever. The new Prime Minister’s stated answer is council homes. Social housing has an important place, but no single tenure and no single lever will close a gap of this size. We need a wholesale approach: reform on both the supply and demand sides, across every part of the market.
On supply, that means a genuinely short, rules-based national framework, so that a scheme which complies with the local plan gets permission without a fight. Planning departments properly resourced, with fees ringfenced to pay for them. Statutory consultees held to hard deadlines. A proportionate regime for small sites, so SME builders can come back into the market. And environmental obligations met strategically, at plan level, rather than relitigated site by site.
On demand, buyers need a realistic route to a deposit and a mortgage. Help to Buy had its critics, but its closure left a hole that has not been filled. A stamp duty regime that penalises moving freezes the chain at every link.
And across tenures, we should stop treating private sale, rental and affordable housing as rivals. Build-to-rent can underwrite faster build-out on large sites yet starts fell 79 per cent in the year to June, with investors spooked by talk of rent controls and tax changes. Capital is patient, but not masochistic; it needs stability. Housing associations, likewise, need certainty on rents and grant so they can borrow and build. They are delivery partners, not an afterthought.
None of this means tearing up the 2012 settlement. Its principles; a presumption in favour of sustainable development, local plans that mean something, communities with a real say remain right. It means stripping away what has grown up around them, and treating housing as the economic and social priority it is.
We cleared the thicket once. It has grown back. Britain needs a party willing to go back to the drawing board and the party of home ownership should be the one holding the pen.