August 2025

Rapid Reforms

Bringing growth to the front door

“More construction, more housing, more concrete doesn’t mean the country is growing […] It doesn’t help me right now.”

– Man, Conservative-Labour Swing Voter, Bexleyheath

Mind the Growth Gap

Foreword

Chair of the Labour Growth Group and MP for Milton Keynes North

By Chris Curtis MP

We are at a critical juncture for delivering for the British public. After 14 years of stagnation, people are fed up with broken promises and tired systems that have held back communities and made the cost of living crisis even worse. This is why it is so important this Labour Government sticks to its ambitious housebuilding agenda: another tool in our arsenal as a lever for growth that can be felt everywhere.

We have already seen this in practice. Because of changes to some of the words in the National Planning Policy Framework, the Chancellor could announce faster economic growth in her most recent spring statement, meaning more money to spend on public services over this parliament.

But if we want to fix the mess that was left us, we have no choice but to go further. The OBR showed the potential for rapid reforms  that can drive growth and raise money to renew our vital public services. With public spending pressures and global growth in decline, it is essential we find a way domestically to further boost good growth.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, already having proved itself an engine of growth in reforming the NPPF, therefore has another clear opportunity to provide fiscal headroom to invest in our public services. By enacting additional swift, no-cost planning reforms to unlock housing delivery within this Parliament we will be tackling the housing crisis with the gravity it requires, whilst also delivering tangible, real growth for people all over the country.

This paper set out by the Good Growth Foundation provides a route forward; by identifying ways to utilise draft and existing legislation, it offers a swift way to deliver more housing and headroom. This promises a huge potential windfall of investment in communities and infrastructure - a blueprint for showcasing what a Labour Government can do at pace for communities across the country.

Executive Summary

This paper sets out a package of rapid, high-impact planning reforms that the Government can implement swiftly to unlock housing supply, raise fiscal headroom, and deliver visible improvements to people’s lives. With housebuilding starts at their lowest levels since the financial crisis, and planning decisions at a 45-year low, urgent action is needed to reverse the chronic underdelivery of homes in the UK and ensure the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes is met by the end of this Parliament.

Backed by evidence from the OBR and international precedent, our proposals show that reforms requiring no new primary legislation can deliver a major economic and social dividend, raising fiscal headroom, improving affordability, connecting communities to major infrastructure, and restoring public trust in delivery.

We recommend four rapid, practical interventions

1) Delegated Planning Decisions

Empower professional planners to approve developments consistent with local plans without committee input. Extend delegation to mid-rise developments in metro mayoral areas and medium-sized sites (10–50 homes) to ensure timely, rules-based decisions.

2) A New Fast Track for Development

Activate National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) to create clear, national planning rules. NDMPs take precedence over conflicting local plans and could encourage development near transport hubs, on brownfield sites, and in areas of high demand, delivering homes where they are needed and improving affordability.

3) Major Project Homes

Lift the 500-home limit on housing consents linked to Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs). By delivering thousands of homes alongside projects like East-West Rail and the Transpennine Route Upgrade, this policy could catalyse the creation of well-connected communities across growth corridors.

4) Street Votes for Local Projects

Enable communities to approve home extensions and infill developments via Street Votes, providing localised, democratic support for densification. This will unlock small-site development in suburbs and provide new opportunities for SME builders.

Together, these measures could deliver an additional 229,000 to 280,000 homes over four years, and £4.7–5.7 billion in fiscal headroom by 2029–30: outpacing even the impact of recent changes to the National Planning Policy Framework. By reconnecting housing delivery with demand and delivering homes alongside new infrastructure, these reforms also address voters’ disillusionment with a system seen as broken and unresponsive.

The opportunity is clear. These reforms can be implemented quickly through existing Bills, statutory instruments, and guidance, requiring no new primary legislation. They offer the Government a chance to demonstrate visible delivery, lower the cost of living, and increase fiscal headroom at a crucial political and economic moment.

Introduction

Bringing Growth to the Front Door

Increasing housebuilding has been central to the Labour Government’s agenda for tackling the housing crisis and boosting economic growth. The Government has, quite literally, bet the house and pinned significant ambition on planning reform to deliver on its growth aims.

There is much to be excited about. In its Spring Forecast, the OBR gave an unprecedented endorsement of last year’s changes to the National Planning Policy Framework, estimating a 0.2% increase in GDP and £3.5 billion in additional annual fiscal headroom by 2029–30.[1] “For a zero-cost reform, this represents the largest growth impact the OBR has ever forecast”, [2] with 170,000 additional homes projected to be delivered over the period, 67,000 of which will be built in the last year of the forecast.

Increasing housebuilding even further is therefore a major and timely opportunity to raise more fiscal headroom, provide the Government flexibility  and shore up public spending. Against the backdrop of slowing global growth, rising fiscal pressures and reduced trade prospects with the US, the case for boosting supply-side reforms is more necessary than ever. [3] Domestically, ageing demographics and higher borrowing costs are placing additional pressure on public finances. [4] The passage of these rapid reforms could deliver a significant number of homes by the end of the Parliament, raising growth and improving the Government’s fiscal credibility.

But this is not just about improving national economic figures. In Mind the Growth Gap, we found that the success of the Government’s housing reforms will ultimately be judged not by GDP, but by whether the Government can end the squeeze on living standards and lift people’s day-to-day pressures. [5] Similarly, the public is much less concerned about the overall quantity of homes built compared to the need to see affordability improve. This can only happen through an increase in housing supply where prices are highest. The failure of the UK’s planning system to connect housing supply with demand has been noticed by key voters, who often see construction and stagnation coexist. [6]

Removing barriers to building more homes  brings not only greater fiscal benefit, but - we argue - also tangible change in communities at a time when people are increasingly cynical of politicians. We found that Labour-Reform Switchers are “sick of mainstream politicians doing nothing”, [7] and “it seems like the promises that the Government [makes] have no impact at all on [our lives], because the promises never come through”. [8] The UK’s archaic planning system is endemic of this, needlessly increasing housing costs and fostering disillusionment. Its inability to build homes where prices are highest raises the cost of living and sows doubt in parliamentary democracy and decision-makers’ ability to impact people’s lives. [9]

Consequently, this set of policies seeks to make housing and infrastructure projects more  plentiful and tangible: to ensure housebuilding is much more likely to realise benefits for ordinary people, and accelerate the delivery of positive change and much-needed, impactful investment. It will achieve this by building more homes overall, but also permitting more developments where they can drive productivity growth, allowing people to access better wages and opportunities. [10]

These mechanisms could unlock billions of pounds of investment for the Government; investment that could lead to people having more money left over at the end of the month, improving the quality of their local services, and creating jobs and opportunity. These planning changes must therefore be seen through the lens of helping communities as much as the Exchequer: policies that create fiscal headroom, reduce housing costs and create visible change in communities by tying them closer to good infrastructure, high streets and jobs. By accelerating housebuilding where it makes the biggest difference and connecting it to transport, skills and services, the Government can show growth can be both fair and felt.

Our proposal: A quick wins planning playbook

1.1

Fast, visible, real change felt in hundreds of communities across the UK; connecting people with significant projects and making growth feel real: this is what could be achieved with these rapid reforms.

Our proposal outlines a package of practical, statutory instruments, fast-acting changes to legislation in train and ministerial guidance that together can significantly boost housebuilding, supporting the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes by the end of the Parliament. The sooner these changes are implemented, the more time they will have to take effect and contribute to housebuilding and greater tax receipts throughout the Parliament. If they are introduced ahead of the  Autumn Budget, there is a strong chance they can contribute to the OBR’s assessment for the Government’s headroom this year.

Such reforms would come at a critical moment for the housing and construction sectors. Planning decisions and permissions in England are at their lowest levels since 1979;[11] and housebuilding starts in 2024 are down to just 132,000 - the lowest ebb since the global financial crisis.[12] Additionally, the epicentre of the affordability crisis is also behind its housing need, with London’s housing starts on track to deliver only 1/20th of its annual housing requirement.[13] Furthermore, unresolved building safety challenges, such as the issue of second staircases, add another dimension to the push to deliver more housing. With the UK facing a shortfall of over four million homes,[14] the scale of the challenge is vast and is only getting bigger.

It is not just the quantity of homes that need to be delivered. The location of additional housing counts for at least as much. These reforms are also intended to partly reverse the pattern of development in the UK which tends to push new housing towards the outskirts of towns and cities, by enabling suburban densification and removing barriers to urban redevelopments.[15] This will support agglomeration to boost productivity and long-term growth by reconnecting housebuilding with where people want to live, increasing supply in areas where housing costs are unaffordable and giving businesses a better pool of talent to hire from.[16]

Given the low baseline and the scale of the housing crisis, we argue the Government should use all possible tools and measures as soon as possible to help meet its housebuilding target. By providing greater regulatory certainty and demonstrating strong political intent, the Government can encourage developers to bring forward new proposals with confidence. Granting more permissions will send a clear signal to the market and help accelerate delivery, making it more likely the Government achieves its goals and realises the associated benefits sooner: both fiscal and amongst ordinary people who are impatient for change.

The impact of acting now: £4.7bn in additional headroom

1.2

The OBR assessed the Government’s initial reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF), projecting that they would add 170,000 homes by the end of the Parliament, including 67,000 more homes in the final year of the forecast resulting in a fiscal benefit of £3.5bn for 2029/30. [17]

We estimate that our proposals could deliver an estimated 90-110,000 additional homes per year in 2029/30, amounting to  hundreds of thousands of more homes over the same four-year time period. This would be  134-164% of the additional homes the OBR says the NPPF reforms will deliver in 2029/30. Using the same fiscal impact, our measures would have a fiscal benefit of between £4.7bn to £5.746bn in 2029/30, and deliver between 229,000-280,000 additional homes over the next four years.

We estimate that these proposals will incrementally deliver more housing each year, reaching 90-110,000 homes up to and including 2029/30. This is in line with the OBR’s estimates for increasing house building and fiscal benefits as a result of the changes to the NPPF. As can be seen in the table below, not only will these proposals realise more headroom, but they may also achieve the Government’s goal of building 1.5 million homes by the end of the Parliament.

Table 1: Housing units delivered and corresponding fiscal headroom according to OBR forecasting

With building starts currently very low, we propose the Government uses all possible tools to meet its housing target, as there are many factors that influence the  permitting and building of new homes, such as cyclical and regulatory pressures. Introducing these reforms early in the Parliament would  give them more time to counter such pressures and bear fruit in future tax revenues.

Additional planning reform measures may also support in giving confidence to the bond market, thereby improving the environment for  borrowing costs. The International Monetary Fund has reported in 2024 and 2025 that departing from the highly localised and discretionary planning system will durably lift potential growth,[18] and could significantly boost competitiveness and “chronically low private investment”.[19]

Our quick wins recommendations

1.3

Our proposals demonstrate a quick and efficient way of making real change without burden on parliamentary time. The suite below includes a number of changes that do not need new primary legislation to be enacted. They include delivering a delegated plan-led system through the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the activation of existing legislative  powers and changes to guidance that can be actioned by the Secretary of State promptly. These could, by our analysis, deliver a substantive boost to housebuilding numbers in this Parliament and an uplift in growth enabled by MHCLG.

They are the exact kind of swift reforms that could tackle the public scepticism of delivery: boost good growth in every part of the country without needing to draft any new Bills.

Quick wins planning playbook: A summary

1) Delegated planning decisions
In the Planning and Infrastructure Bill,  exempt developments in-keeping with local plans from Local Planning Committee appeal.

2) A new fast track for development
Draft and activate National Development Management Policies in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act.

3) Major Project Homes
Remove  the limit to the number of housing consents in ministerial guidance  for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects.

4) Street Votes for local projects
Activate Street Votes in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act.

Proposal 1

Delegated Planning Decisions

Exempting local plan proposals from committee input

We propose that more developments are solely dealt with by planning officers. 

The Planning and Infrastructure Bill is introducing a national scheme of delegation (NSoD), and it should define development on sites allocated in local plans as “Tier A” to be dealt with solely by professional planners, rather than “Tier B” with committee call-in powers.[20] Mid-rise developments in metro mayoral areas should also be defined as “Tier A”.

An MHCLG technical consultation is reversing its previous proposals for the legislation  that  sought to delegate planning permissions to professional planners.[21] This  means the Planning and Infrastructure Bill will allow sites allocated in local plans to have input from planning committees,[22] leaving open significant opportunities to reject  and delay developments. We agree with the  Centre for Cities, which argues this may negate both the Government's reforms to increase local plan coverage and its  reintroduction of mandatory local authority targets to support new housebuilding.[23]

As put forward initially before the drafting of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, the NSoD should treat all developments that are part local plans as “Tier A” so they are solely dealt with by professional planners and exempt from Planning Committee call-in powers. 

Additionally, the minor-sites exemption is too small to deliver mid-rise housing in urban areas. Medium sites (10-50 homes) should also be defined as “Tier A” in local plans, and immune from Councillors calling applications in. These changes will help create a predictable, rules-based, plan-led system and encourage more development.

A rules-based approach to planning could deliver a significant uplift in the number of homes being built as seen around the world, and have the most significant impact on housing delivery in urban areas such as  London, where construction has collapsed due to a multitude of challenges.[24]

Delegating planning decisions to planning officers could be made even more effective by drafting National Development Management Policies (NDMPs). With more housing permissions decided by planners, NDMPs could provide clear conditions for when developments could be approved, providing even further clarity and certainty and encourage more housebuilding. As the Centre for Cities has argued, this could be crafted into an ambitious flexible zoning system, where a rules-based planning system could end the UK’s shortage of homes.[25] In Japan where a zoning system is in place, nearly 800,000 housing units were started in 2024, the UK had just over 132,000. Between 2018-2023, Japan completed 2.381m additional homes, compared to the UK’s estimated number of completed homes of 1,206,985.[27] Therefore it is estimated that the difference in annual output is 234,803 homes.

We are not proposing exactly the same system as seen in Japan, but it is clear that delegating all applications consistent with local plans to officers, and in conjunction with NDMPs will be a significant shift to a rules-based planning system rather than a discretionary one. We conservatively estimate that this shift would deliver one quarter of the benefit of a full zonal system, leading to an additional 58,700 net new homes per year by 2029/30 based on our analysis below.

[20] Centre for Cities, Reform of Planning Committees 3 July 2025

[21] Ibid.

[22] Ibid.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Molior London, residential development in London 2025

[25] Centre for Cities, A Zoning System for England, February 2025

[26] Statista,Number of new construction starts of dwellings in Japan from 1995 to 2024; ONS, Indicators of housebuilding, UK, April 2025

[27] E-Stat, 2023 Housing and Land Survey, updated 29 January 2025; ONS, Indicators of housebuilding, UK, April 2025  NB - the UK housing completion figures are an estimate because Covid-19 affected data collection in Wales. We have estimated that Welsh housing completions were 79% of 2019 in 2020, and the same as 2019 in years 2021-22.

A lime green recycled arrows icon in a circular shape

Proposal 2

A New Fast Track for Development

Activating National Development Management Policies

We propose to implement a national rulebook that supersedes local decision making in some circumstances.

This can be done by activating and introducing National Development Management Policies (NDMPs) to create clear planning rules and regulations, to limit local plans to deal with specific issues by providing a consistent national rulebook of planning regulations. In the event of a conflict between the Local Plan and NDMPs, NDMPs will have primacy.

The Levelling Up and Regeneration Act contained a provision for (NDMPs) that set out that in the event of a conflict between the two, NDMPs would prevail over local plans. 

These can be used to create shortcuts for approving new developments in specific contexts within the discretionary planning system, or overhaul the system with a new rules-based national system of zoning permissions.[38[ In fact, MHCLG has already utilised this to an extent to announce ‘Brownfield passports’.[29] Below, we propose utilising this mechanism across a broader range of scenarios.

The Government could introduce simple NDMPs that will allow encourage much more development near rail links to have a higher impact on economic growth, or to support SME developers in densifying urban areas using the following examples as promoted by Public First and other organisations:

  1. “Planning applications which comprise or include homes on green belt, brownfield or greenfield land, where the closest boundary of the site is 1200 metres or less from a train station from which a town or city centre can be reached in no more than 45 minutes’ train travelling time are to be approved.”

  2. “Planning applications for 20 homes or less on brownfield sites are to be approved.”

  3. “Planning applications using suitable brownfield land within settlements for homes and or other identified needs are to approved.”

  4. “Where there is a housing land supply or delivery shortfall, planning applications that comprise or include homes are to be approved unless either (a) a policy in the NDMP or  other national planning policy that restricts the development of the site provides a strong reason for refusing the development proposed.” [30]

The number of homes delivered by NDMPs varies depending on the policies that are proposed. But our first suggestion of permitting homes near railway connections to town and city centres could deliver at least 2 million homes on green belt land alone.[31] Given that we have widened permissions in example 1 above to include greenfield, brownfield and green belt land, it would support significantly more new homes.

The example NDMPs above could also significantly improve  housing affordability by permitting limited or ambitious redevelopments in suburban and urban areas, where prices are often highest. These policies can partly reverse the prevailing habit of new housing which is often built in the periphery of towns and cities, therefore having a very limited effect on the prices of existing homes and rents. By consenting to more housing where desirability is high, housing supply will have the biggest impact on lowering living costs.[32]

Furthermore, activating NDMPs in conjunction with exempting local plan proposals from committee input will have a combined zonal effect that ensures housing targets are much more likely to be met. [33]

Proposal 3

Major Project Homes

Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects and Housing

We propose to increase the number of homes that can be built near large infrastructure projects.

The 2016 Housing and Planning Act has measures to link housing with nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPs),[34] but the amount of consents by a minister for each NSIP is limited by ministerial guidance to just 500 homes.[35]

Given that the Planning and Infrastructure Bill focuses  on speeding up the approval and lowering the costs for NSIPs, the Government has the opportunity to deliver infrastructure and new homes together.

Homes are already being delivered successfully alongside infrastructure. In Old Oak Common,[36] 22,000 new homes are being built in the “impact zone” of HS2, including a 22% increase in the number of planning applications in the area since 2017.[37] Last year CBRE reported that the Elizabeth Line saw 33,620 homes built around its stations between 2009-2023.[38] This shows strong potential for new well-connected housing delivered alongside infrastructure.

The Government should go further and amend the ministerial guidance to lift the cap for the number of consents of new housing alongside NSIPs, so that multiple planning permissions can be easily approved at once. This could create much more ambitious housing delivery than previous schemes, particularly on greenfield or greenbelt land where development is quicker, cheaper and easier than in London. Given the known difficulties with homes being built out, we suggest the Secretary of State consents to hundreds of thousands of homes alongside NSIPs so that a sufficient quantity is built during this Parliament.[39]

For example, the East-West Rail - Bedford to Cambridge and Western improvements project, which is in pre-application stage, will create a new railway line and station improvement works across the South East of England.[40] Given the importance of this project to the Government’s growth agenda of an ‘Ox-Cam Arc’, the Secretary of State could give consent for hundreds of thousands of homes, a significant portion of which  to be built during this Parliament in this region alone.[41]

This could be between a 3.8-6.4% increase to the number of existing homes in the local authority and parish council areas over the next four years, or the equivalent of building between 0.42-2.5% additional homes as a proportion of existing households each year. This is a conservative estimate considering the local authorities that are already delivering the most homes as a proportion of their stock in the past year without ministerial guidance powers, such as Uttlesford at 2.4%, Tewkesbury 2.3%, Fenland at 2.1% and Barnet at 2%.[42]

Similarly, the Transpennine Route Upgrade goes through many local authorities that have house prices that comfortably exceed build costs, where developers could add to housing supply. A similar approach to giving consents in Stockport, Salford, Trafford, Manchester, Leeds and York could yield a major increase in housebuilding, and thus additional fiscal headroom.

Taken separately, a  3.8-6.4% increase in the number of homes, or an annual build rate of 0.42-2.5% in the number of homes -a demonstrably achievable goal - could see additional housing growth between:

  • East-West Rail Upgrade: 13,300-22,200 homes in four years.

  • Transpennine Route Upgrade: 40,800-68,000 homes in four years.[43]

We have estimated that the number of homes built using this policy would grow incrementally, like the OBR calculated changes to the NPPF. We project a built rate relative to the number of existing households growing from 0.42% in the first year, 0.73% in the second, 1.16% in the third and 1.5% in the last year from our low estimate, to 0.71%, 1.21%, 1.9% and 2.5% respectively for our high estimate.

We have limited ourselves to two NSIPs in this proposal, but this change to ministerial guidance has the potential to be much more far-reaching than this, particularly considering the Government aims to decide 150 NSIP proposals by the end of the Parliament.[44] While the majority of these will be energy projects, there are big opportunities for new homes in examples such as building Heathrow’s third runway, HS2 and any of its potential extensions in the future and, if it is resumed, Crossrail 2. 

The lifting of the cap for new Project Homes could prove significant in delivering not just a significant quantity of new homes, but communities that are very well connected and served well by critical infrastructure.

A large, stylized orange number 2 with sharp edges and geometric design.

Proposal 4

Street Votes for Local Projects

Street Votes are a proposed mechanism that would allow residents of individual streets to collectively agree on new homes in their local area. 

Under this system, homeowners on a street could jointly propose and approve plans for home extensions or the construction of new homes, enabling increases in housing density.[45]

This proposal is designed to supplement the current planning system, offering a faster route for communities willing to accept more housing and ‘wake up’ the vast majority of suburbs that contribute no or little housing per year.[46] This can also be enabled via the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act and allow neighbourhoods to democratically permit home extensions and upward developments local to them, and create more business for SME housebuilders.

Street Votes shares principles with international examples of democratically-led land readjustment, in that it shares the financial benefits of increasing development with property owners.[47] Already in the UK, people have also shown overwhelming support for redevelopment and densification as demonstrated by London’s ballot-backed estate regeneration policy, which has seen 29 out of 30 ballots supported by a majority.[48] Through Street Votes, residents will similarly be able to permit housebuilding and extensions that can be sold on or increase their property values. 

Such a scheme was introduced in Israel in 2005, where TAMA 38[49] acts as a supplementary system of urban renewal, with significant results in high-demand cities like Tel Aviv. From delivering  2% of new housing units built in Israel in 2010, to today where 37% of all new homes come from TAMA 38 or its sister program Pinui-Binui, it has been a major policy success, not least in delivering  over half of new construction in the Tel Aviv area.[50] These schemes received more than 28,000 housing permits in 2022, and whilst Street Votes is less permissive than Tama 38, the UK’s housing stock multiples of times larger than Israel’s. Taken together we conservatively estimate that the more limited Street Votes proposal could see 10-15,000 new homes delivered per year in the UK by 2029-30.[51]

This may be a relatively limited number of homes, but will deliver an important shake up to the construction sector which sees SME developers build just 10% of new homes - down from 39% in 1988.[52] Small developments given permission via Street Votes will drive confidence amongst SME builders and therefore opportunities for small-site developments that increase housing densities and bring forward housing more quickly compared to the build out rates of major developers.[53]

For instance, when Croydon’s Suburban Design Guide was in place between 2017-2021 nearly 2,000 homes built on small sites because small developers were able to propose developments with confidence they would receive planning permission.[54] This was higher than other London boroughs with Barnet next building 700 homes on small sites despite similar size and proportion of green belt.[55] With Street Votes creating democratic support and certainty for permitting new homes, SME developers could take advantage of this opportunity too.

This will also likely have a notable impact on housing affordability. Given that Street Votes enables residents to propose and approve developments for a profit, the incentive to build will be greatest where housing is most expensive. This aligns new supply with areas of highest demand, helping to ease the cost of living. By empowering communities to unlock development in desirable, expensive neighbourhoods for a profit, the policy could significantly improve housing affordability where it is most needed.

Conclusions

Rapid Reforms for Growth

The Government stands at a precipice, and with vast ambitions for growth and housebuilding, it must always have in mind  how this will be felt, tangibly, in the real world. There is a dual problem when looking for solutions to raise the fiscal headroom: (1) finding solutions that will grow the economy and (2) ensuring these solutions are visibly improving voters’ lives.

It is clear that housebuilding and planning reforms of late have been at the core of the OBR’s forecasts for growth, and have immense potential to continue pushing at this door and opening our new routes for increased headroom. Our proposals do just that, identifying an additional £4.7bn of fiscal headroom by the end of the forecast period through enacting quick changes that can unlock more housebuilding.

But it is more than just the impact on headroom that makes this suite of ideas appealing. These policies will improve housing affordability and demonstrate that the Government can get things done once again. They will help deliver homes where they’re most impactful by building them alongside infrastructure and increasing housing supply in suburbs where it is scarce. Under these proposals, the Government can literally bring growth to the front door and increase investment into communities.

These rapid reforms open up a new pathway for the Government to propel forward the exact sort of growth people are desperate for them to deliver - all through the use of draft legislation or the statute books already in Parliament.

Appendix

Detailed methodology

1) Delegated Planning Decisions

We believe that these two policies in conjunction will deliver 58,700 additional homes per year by 2029/30. In tandem, the proposals represent a significant step towards a rules-based zonal system similar to that which  the Centre for Cities has proposed. Our figure is calculated by comparing the difference in home completion rates between Japan and the UK, updating the Centre for Cities figures from 2019 for 2025.

This output gap in building new homes between the UK (1,206,985 homes) and Japan (2,381,000) during 2018-2023 was approximately 1,174,015 homes, or 234,803 homes per year. We are not proposing exactly the same system as seen in Japan, but it is clear that delegating all applications consistent with local plans to officers, and in conjunction with implementing NDMPs, will be a significant shift to a rules-based planning system rather than a discretionary one. We conservatively estimate that this would deliver one quarter of the benefit of a full zonal system (234,803 additional homes each year), leading to an additional 58,700 net new homes per year by 2029/30.

2) Major Project Homes

We believe that removing the limit to the number of housing consents via ministerial guidance for Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) will deliver between 21,300-35,500 homes per year by 2029/30. This is based on two NSIP projects, the East-West Rail Upgrade and the Transpennine Route Upgrade.

We have calculated this would result in the number of existing households growing by 3.8-6.4%, the equivalent of building between 0.42-2.5% additional homes as a proportion of existing households each year. This is built off of the assumption that some local authorities are already building significant numbers of new homes as a proportion of their housing stock, such as Uttlesford at 2.4%, Tewkesbury 2.3%, Fenland at 2.1% and Barnet at 2% over the past year.[57]

We have applied this estimate in housebuilding uplift in local authorities, towns and villages where the NSIPs will operate and where current house prices exceed build costs. The number of existing households was calculated using the House of Commons Library and the 2021 Census.

  • East-West Rail Upgrade: additional 5,245-8,742 homes in 2029/30, or 13,300-22,200 additional homes in four years.

  • Transpennine Route Upgrade: additional 16,044-26,740 homes in 2029-30, or 40,800-68,000 additional homes in four years.[58]

We project Major Project Homes will add homes in the following increments:

Table 2: Low estimates per NSIP (rounded)

Table 3: High estimates per NSIP (rounded)

[57] The Times, Why Labour is failing to build the homes Britain needs, 3 July 2025

[58] NB - these estimates were calculated by using Local Authority Data for numbers of households and England Census Data from 2021

3) Street Votes for Local Projects

We estimate the activating Street Votes will deliver 10-15,000 new homes per year. We have compared against similar schemes operating in Israel which build 28,000 homes annually. Although this policy in Israel is more ambitious and permissive than Street Votes, they have a much smaller number of households than the UK. Taking this into account, we conservatively estimate that Street Votes will thus result in 10,000-15,000 additional homes being built a year.

4) Year on Year Figures and Incremental Growth in Additional Homes and Headroom

The OBR determined that prior NPPF reforms would deliver 170,000 additional homes during the forecast period. They also forecast that 67,000 of these 170,000 homes would be built in 2029/30, providing the Government with £3.5bn in fiscal headroom in the 2029/30 year.

Given that we estimate our planning reforms will deliver 90,000-110,000 additional homes per year by 2029/30 as per above, we have taken the OBR’s estimates for fiscal benefits and calculated that this will deliver £4.7-5.746bn of fiscal headroom by the end of the forecast period.

Like the OBR, we also estimate that if these reforms are implemented promptly, that the additional housing and fiscal benefit will climb from a low base up to a 90,000-110,000 peak in 2029-30. See the table below for workings and explanation.

With special thanks to…

Louisa Dollimore

Arthur Fyfe-Stoica

Ruby Herbert

Jade Azim

Theresa Bischof

Billie Coulson