This was made abundantly clear in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first speech, where she stated that planning reforms are not a “nice to have” but an “absolute must” – something I’ve been waiting to hear for a long time.

She also shared that the new government is set to reform the National Planning Policy Framework, creating a new growth-focused approach to the planning system, which will include restoring mandatory housing targets.

In its manifesto, the Labour Party committed to building 300,000 new homes yearly, equating to one-and-a-half million new homes in the next five years.

However, if we look back no further than last year when 231,100 new homes were built and an estimated 176,460 started, we can see that this is going to be no easy matter.

To deal with this, the Chancellor suggested that the deputy Prime Minister will get resilient with Local Planning Authorities and pledged 300 additional planning officers.

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This all sounds promising, but I hope the planning reforms won’t fail to address conversion opportunities, something we aren’t short of in the UK. With an estimated 165,000 privately owned commercial and business premises empty and a further 7,000 owned by local authorities that have been vacant for over 12 months, there’s plenty of opportunity in this area.

We also have around 400 square kilometres of small, brownfield sites owned by local authorities that could be used to deliver an additional 1.6 million homes.

 

Lenders ‘well-positioned’ to back conversion and brownfield development

Property lending specialists are well-positioned to support this conversion and brownfield development, given that many of us appeal to smaller developers. We’re seeing a resurgence in the £2m-10m financing space, which we specialise in at Assetz Capital, and we are committed to continue supporting the sector over the next few years.

Another of the key challenges in achieving this goal and accelerating the housing development process is access to people. To be in a position to build 300,000 new homes per year by 2030, research suggests that over 130,000 more workers will need to be recruited into the sector.

It is unclear how this will be addressed, but it will likely involve a review of visa requirements for EU nationals working in the construction industry. It will also mean making the sector a more attractive one to work in, given the lack of construction apprenticeships completed in the UK in recent years.

Overall, the construction industry remains positive about the next era of housing development. The most recent Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) UK Monitor revealed that the respondents were hopeful that government planning announcements would include a rise in residential workloads as private residential and non-residential sectors are expected to grow. The survey also identified a lack of surveyors as a key challenge facing the industry.

We’ll have to wait to see exactly how the new Labour government plans to achieve the housing targets it has set out, and it’s a topic I’m eagerly awaiting for them to address. In the meantime, we should feel confident in knowing we have the full support of the thriving UK SME housebuilding sector and specialist property lenders.