Last week the Government set out its commitment to housing supply, including our ambition to deliver one million new homes over this Parliament, while maintaining the protections that matter most to local communities.
We will meet this target through fast-tracking sites for brownfield development and delivering new infrastructure, backed by £550 million. Our plan will make it easier for underused buildings to be converted into new homes, streamlining planning processes and cutting unnecessary red tape.
We will develop urban areas where demand is highest, protecting our precious countryside. Homes must be built in the right places, where it makes sense. Communities must have a say.
The Government has a strong record on housebuilding – this Parliament we achieved the highest single year of delivery (243,000 homes) in more than three decades. We’ve delivered 2.2 million new homes since 2010 and supported over 750,000 people to buy their first home in the past couple of years – the highest number in any two-year period for 40 years.
It’s worth remembering that under Labour housebuilding reached its lowest rate since the 1920s. Between 1997 and 2010, average housing delivery was 168,000 a year. Since then, under Conservative governments, the average has been 193,000.
Labour has no plan on housing. Their only pledge is uncontrolled development in the countryside threatening to concrete over our precious green spaces which would be disastrous in the Forest of Dean.
The Government’s policy is in keeping with the position that I have previously adopted on housebuilding locally. I opposed the Forest of Dean District Council’s plans to build several thousand homes in Churcham near the already congested A40/A48 junction. These ill-considered plans were backed by the Greens who now have control of the council. Instead, I advocated for a sensible combination of existing settlement expansion and development of the Beachley Barracks site which is to be vacated by the MoD by the end of the decade – a suggestion shown by the council’s own planning documents to be viable. I continue to make the case for a Chepstow bypass to support this proposal.
In the Forest of Dean and beyond, it is the Conservatives who will build more homes in the places where people want them and need them.
More homes where it makes sense: my plan to support more families onto the housing ladder whilst protecting Britain’s countryside. pic.twitter.com/SIEvDo131y
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) July 25, 2023
This article was first published in The Forester newspaper.