Housing secretary Angela Rayner has acknowledged that Labour’s pledge to build 1.5 million homes during the current Parliament will be “a really difficult” target to achieve, fuelling further speculation over whether the government can meet one of its key election commitments.
Speaking to the press, Rayner insisted the target had not been abandoned but admitted delivering it would be a significant challenge.
“I’m not dropping it – I’m just saying it’s a really difficult challenge,” she said.
“I am going to keep the target, but it’s like me saying I’m going to run the London Marathon in under five hours. That would be a real challenge for me, but I would do it.”
The commitment to build 1.5 million homes in England over the course of the five-year Parliament was a central pledge in Labour’s 2024 general election manifesto and remains a cornerstone of the government’s housing strategy.
Meeting the target would require around 300,000 homes to be delivered each year, but completions continue to fall short of that level. While ministers have introduced planning reforms and other measures designed to increase housing supply, developers and industry bodies have warned that planning delays, viability pressures, skills shortages, infrastructure constraints and weaker market conditions continue to limit housebuilding.
As each year passes without reaching the annual target, the number of homes required in the remaining years of the Parliament increases, making the overall goal progressively harder to achieve.
Despite those challenges, Rayner maintained that the government remained committed to the target, describing it as a “really difficult stretched target” rather than one that had been dropped.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It certainly got more challenging, and we’ve seen things like construction costs go up, etc., which has had a real negative impact on that.
“But I’m not dropping it. I’m just saying that it is a really difficult stretched target.”
“One-point-five million homes is a difficult target. It was when I made the target, but I’m going to keep the target, and I’m not going to be defeated,” she added.
