It was the headline pledge. 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament. Sir Keir Starmer said it. Angela Rayner said it. Every Labour candidate in 2024 said it. The latest Full Fact tracker tells the truth: in the first full year of Labour government, only 140,860 homes were completed — 47% of the 300,000 a year that the pledge mathematically requires. Net additions to the housing stock between July 2024 and March 2026 stand at around 342,100. That is roughly 22.8% of the 1.5 million target, with about half the Parliament gone. The pledge, on Labour's own numbers, is finished.

The London Catastrophe

The Centre for Policy Studies has crunched the figures for the capital and the conclusion is stark: London is now facing its worst housebuilding challenge since the Second World War. New starts in Greater London have collapsed. Affordable housing schemes are being mothballed. Build-to-rent pipelines have stalled. The Mayor's targets are unreachable on any plausible trajectory. This is not a temporary blip caused by interest rates. It is structural.

Outside London the picture is mixed. Rural and shire authorities are being told by central government to accept top-down housing numbers they consider unworkable. Greenfield sites are being unlocked over the heads of local communities while brownfield viability problems go unsolved. The Office for Budget Responsibility now expects housing additions to fall to just 215,000 a year in 2026/27 — the lowest figure for years and a long way from 300,000.

Why The Numbers Are Not Adding Up

Labour's planning reforms — the new National Planning Policy Framework, the watered-down affordable housing requirements, the bypassing of local plans — were supposed to unlock supply. They have not. The reasons are the ones the industry has been pointing at for a decade: a shortage of skilled construction labour, the cost of materials, the cost of capital, the way Section 106 and the Community Infrastructure Levy interact, and a planning system that is now genuinely understaffed in many councils.

Add to that the chilling effect of the Renters' Rights Act, which has driven thousands of small landlords out of the market, reducing rental stock at exactly the moment first-time buyers cannot afford to purchase. The result is a market squeezed at both ends: fewer homes to buy, fewer homes to rent, higher prices on both.

The Political Honesty Gap

What is most galling about the housing collapse is the refusal to admit it. Ministers are still using the language of "we are on track" and "the pipeline is filling". The Big Issue, hardly a Reform-friendly publication, ran a recent piece titled, simply, "The UK housing crisis won't be solved in 2026". They are right. PropertyWire's analysis of the delivery shortfall is more measured but reaches the same conclusion. The Manchester University analysis lays out, in detail, what would actually be needed for the pledge to be hit, and the answer involves a transformation of skills, planning and finance that this government has not even started.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK's housing position is unfashionable in Westminster but popular outside it. Build on brownfield first. Stop pretending that allowing developers to bypass local consent is the same as building communities. Reform Section 106 so it actually delivers infrastructure rather than ransom-payments to consultancies. Restore landlord supply by stabilising the regulatory framework rather than tearing it up every fiscal event. Tie net migration to housing capacity, not the other way around — because building homes for a population growing at half a million a year is fighting the wave, not riding it.

Above all, be honest with people. Labour's pledge was never deliverable on the basis the party set out. Reform UK is the only major party willing to say so, and to start from the truth.