More than 1,000 new homes need to be built each day to hit Labour’s housebuilding targets, new research shows.
Housebuilders would need to double their current pace of construction, with just 547 homes being built every day, according to figures from Land Value Calculator (LVC).
Labour has pledged to build 1.5 million homes before the end of the current parliament. But even in the best year on record, 2020, only 679 homes a day were built on average.
The figures suggest that builders need to complete hundreds more homes each day and sustain that rate for the next three years to hit the target.
Researchers at LVC said the Government had fallen behind its required building rate by 200,000 homes.
A spokesman for LVC said: “No independent analyst currently thinks that the Government is on track to hit its target.
“New-build starts have risen 43pc from their mid-2024 trough, which is the strongest argument that delivery accelerates from here.
“But at 130,170 a year, they remain a quarter below 2023 and below the current rate of completions.”
“A change of prime minister does not change the arithmetic. The clock holds whoever is in No 10 to the promise,” they added.
For Andy Burnham to meet Labour’s 2024 election manifesto pledge, the pace of building will need to increase to 367,700 homes a year.
Angela Rayner, who has been reappointed as the Housing Secretary, recently admitted that the 1.5 million-home ambition set “a really difficult stretch target”. However, she said she was “not dropping it”.
She said last weekend the target was “very challenging before, when I came into government”.
“It’s certainly got more challenging, and we’ve seen things like construction costs go up, which has had a real negative impact on that,” she said.
