The National House Building Council's Q1 2026 figures landed in May with a quiet thud. Only 26,959 new homes were registered to be built in the first three months of the year — a 6% fall on Q1 2025. Private sector registrations fell 7%. Construction starts across the period collapsed by a third compared with 2025. Labour's 1.5 million homes pledge is finished. The only question now is when the Government admits it.
The Numbers Don't Lie — Even When Ministers Do
Set out the maths. Labour committed to 1.5 million new homes across this Parliament — roughly 300,000 a year. In their first year in office, just 140,860 homes were completed (47% of the target) and only 115,770 were started (39% of the target). Q1 2026 has now extended the decline rather than reversed it. To hit the headline pledge from here, the industry would need to start more than 400,000 homes a year for the rest of this Parliament. It has never been done.
The construction index released this month confirms the trajectory: the value of building work starting on site in the three months to April fell 9%. Residential starts declined 8% on the quarter and a catastrophic 33% on 2025. Private starts plummeted 39%. The biggest regional collapses were in Northern Ireland (-44%), London (-37%) and Wales (-21%). London is now facing its worst housebuilding challenge since the Second World War.
This Is a Policy Failure, Not a Market Cycle
Ministers will inevitably blame "global headwinds". The truth is closer to home. Every major Labour housing decision has actively suppressed supply. The Renters' Rights Act has triggered a private-landlord exodus, choking the build-to-rent sector. The hike in employer National Insurance has crushed small builders. Stamp duty changes have killed transaction volumes, which in turn has killed developer cash flow. And the threat of further inheritance and property taxes has frozen long-term land investment.
Meanwhile the planning "reforms" Labour boasted about have produced almost nothing on the ground. Section 21 disputes have pushed Section 21 evictions up sharply rather than down. Planning permissions are still at a 15-year low. The "new towns" announcement has produced press releases, not bricks.
The Real-World Cost
This is not a Westminster scoring exercise. 172,000 children are now in temporary accommodation. Mortgage rates have surged 59% from their 2024 lows. Section 21 evictions are rising. Young families in Preston East and across the country have given up the idea of buying their first home altogether. Every unbuilt house is a family stuck renting at record prices, or a couple delaying children, or an older homeowner unable to downsize because there is nothing to downsize into.
It is one of the great betrayals of this Labour Government that it ran on housing — and has comprehensively, demonstrably, made the crisis worse.
What Reform UK Would Do
Reform UK would tear up the Renters' Rights Act provisions that have driven landlords out of the market and replace them with a balanced tenancy regime that protects renters without destroying supply. We would reverse the National Insurance hike that is killing small builders. We would cut stamp duty across the board to unblock the transaction chain. And we would devolve real planning power to councils that actually want to build, while ending the Section 106 racket that allows Whitehall to extract value from every consented site.
Above all, we would set an honest target. Labour's 1.5 million pledge is dead. Pretending otherwise insults voters' intelligence. Britain needs houses. Right now, it has a Government and a planning system that conspire against them.