Rachel Reeves reiterated the Labour Party’s pledge to sweep away restrictive planning rules, labelling them “a barrier to homeownership”.  

“Our planning system is a barrier to opportunity, a barrier to growth – and a barrier to homeownership too,” said the shadow Chancellor in an wide-ranging economic speech to the City last night.  

She added: “Planning reform has become a byword for political timidity in the face of vested interests and a graveyard of economic ambition.    

“It prevents housing from being built where it is most needed – contributing to ever-higher prices and falling rates of home ownership, and constricting the growth of our most productive places.”  

If elected at the next general election, expected later this year, Reeves said Labour “will reintroduce mandatary local housing targets; recruit hundreds of new planners to tackle backlogs; and bring forward the next generation of new towns.”  

She added the country needed “a once-in-a-generation overhaul, to deliver the infrastructure and housing that is fundamental to our ambitions for homeownership, decarbonisation, and growth.”  

Earlier this week, housing secretary Michael Gove directed the Mayor of London to review the capital’s housing plan as it lags more than 25,000 homes a year behind target.     

Gove told Labour’s Sadiq Khan in a letter that to tackle the capital’s “delivery backlog” housebuilding would have to jump from 37,200 new homes a year to more than 62,300 homes.  

The housing secretary identified 736 hectares of industrial land and 47 “opportunity areas” in London where tens of thousands of new homes can be built that should become bogged down by planning restrictions.  

Last year, the UK added 234,400 dwellings, unchanged from a year ago, according to Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities data in November.           

This is below the 2019 Conservative manifesto target of adding 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s.    

Last October, Labour leader Keir Starmer pledged to build 1.5 million new homes over five years, should his party return to government, which would include construction on the green belt.  

In 2022, Gove was forced to scale back planning reforms on 300,000 homes a year building targets across local councils to ‘advisory’ from ‘mandatory’ under pressure from Conservative backbenchers.