Angela Rayner is poised to boost local housing targets by more than 50% in some areas when she unveils the government’s plans to build 1.5 million homes over the next five years tomorrow.  

The deputy prime minister will reveal the country’s new National Planning Policy Framework to MPs on Tuesday, which will make council housing targets mandatory and allow new development in some areas of the green belt.     

But the plan’s new standard method for calculating housing needs will use an algorithm that could see new home quotas lift by more than 50% in some areas, according to a report in the Times.  

The projected spread of new development across the country could resemble framework plans produced by the last Conservative government, which prompted a rebellion among Tory backbenchers in December 2022, because of its emphasis on rural housebuilding.  

Rayner is also expected to “tweak affordability assessments” to factor in how many people might move into an area if housing was cheaper.       

“Our planning system should be a launchpad for the secure, affordable, attractive homes we need, the infrastructure to go with them and to helping achieve our environmental goals,” Rayner wrote in the Observer on Sunday.  

She added: “Yet the system is, too often, a millstone, dragging down not just our housing market, but growth in every part of the country.   

“Which is why we are taking a radically different approach from the last government, which every single year missed its own housing targets.”  

The last government built around one million homes over the previous five years.  

Rayner’s comments come ahead of a key statement by Chancellor Rachel Reeves today where she is expected to promise that there will be no more “surprise Budgets” – instead pledging just one “fiscal event” per year.  

Rachel Reeves is also expected to accuse the last government of covering up the true state of the public finances in a speech that will unveil a £20bn ‘black hole’ in the Treasury purse.