 has warned. The Government currently has a target to build 300,000 a year but senior Tories have argued that centralised housing targets are no longer necessary for more homes to be built per year. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss and her successor Rishi Sunak both argued against targets during the summer Conservative Party leadership campaign. One proposal under consideration is reducing the amount of land local authorities are required to supply to meet their building targets. This would stymie efforts to build houses, the CPS said, and lead to a sharp drop in projects. 'National housing targets would still officially exist, but councils would be free to not deliver the land necessary to hit them,' the influential think tank said. 'Rendering housing targets ineffective in this way would mean at least a 20pc drop in housing supply, perhaps as much as 30-40pc.' Another option is to let councils set their own targets for annual completion. However, the CPS said this would cause a crunch on a similar scale because of local political pressure to block developments. A building downturn would have serious knock-on effects for workers and the wider economy. The think tank estimates that 'a downturn of 20pc in housing supply might lead to 400,000 job losses in those working in construction and maybe another 400,000 in the wider construction-related economy'. Samuel Hughes, head of housing at the CPS, said that pushing local authorities to allow more construction has successfully helped raise completions from fewer than 150,000 homes per year in England in 2012-13 to almost 250,000 in 2019-20. 'It has dragged local authority allocations up from where they were 10 years ago by a substantial margin,' he said. 'It is not obvious what would stop those rates from falling back to closer to where they were, if the target mechanism){kind=link}
Stymying efforts to build houses could mean at least a 20pc drop in supply
Scrapping house building targets will prompt construction of new homes to slump by 20pc and put 800,000 jobs at risk, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) has warned.
The Government currently has a target to build 300,000 a year but senior Tories have argued that centralised housing targets are no longer necessary for more homes to be built per year. Former Prime Minister Liz Truss and her successor Rishi Sunak both argued against targets during the summer Conservative Party leadership campaign.
One proposal under consideration is reducing the amount of land local authorities are required to supply to meet their building targets. This would stymie efforts to build houses, the CPS said, and lead to a sharp drop in projects.
“National housing targets would still officially exist, but councils would be free to not deliver the land necessary to hit them,” the influential think tank said.