Housing plans likely to meet opposition from Labour MPs, says government

Plans for new housing are likely to meet local opposition from Labour MPs, the government has said, as Keir Starmer prepares to enforce mandatory targets within months.

Officials said they will begin consultation on the new targets in the next two weeks, with a view to having them in place by autumn.

The plans are to be unveiled on Wednesday as part of Starmer’s first king’s speech . The changes will mean a presumption in favour of development and the government will have new powers to overrule local objections on national infrastructure such as datacentres.

The government also wants local authorities to work together to identify regional infrastructure needs, and stop individual authorities blocking plans.

Speaking before the speech, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, said he was sure local MPs, including his own, would object to specific developments, but added local authorities would have power over only where housing was built, not if it was built at all.

“People are going to have their view on individual development, they’re entitled to have their view on individual development,” McFadden said. “But local authorities will be asked to identify land for housing, or for development, and they’ve got a choice about whether it’s here or whether it’s there. But overall, we have to get stuff built.”

He added: “So you can have lots of fun in the next couple of years saying, here’s a Labour MP who doesn’t want this particular development. I know that will happen.”

Asked whether that was hypocritical, he said: “I’m not predicting that everything we do is going to be opposed by MPs. But what I’m saying is in the real world, there’ll be some developments that some people don’t like, that’s always going to be the case.”

In its first week in office, Labour overturned the previous government’s de facto ban on onshore windfarms in an effort to boost the construction of clean energy generation.

The prime minister will announce the next stage of the party’s plans to liberalise the planning system on Wednesday with a bill designed to reimpose mandatory housing targets on local authorities. Michael Gove, the former housing secretary, relaxed those targets last year amid pressure from Tory backbenchers, allowing councils to ignore them if they were deemed to undermine the character of an area.

Starmer said before the speech: “Now is the time to take the brakes off Britain. For too long people have been held back, their paths determined by where they came from – not their talents and hard work.

“I am determined to create wealth for people up and down the country. It is the only way our country can progress, and my government is focused on supporting that aspiration.

“Today’s new laws will take back control and lay the foundations of real change that this country is crying out for, creating wealth in every community and making people better off – supporting their ambitions, hopes and dreams.”

Chris Philp, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, said it was “shameless spin” for the government to reclassify green belt land as “grey belt” in order to build on previously protected areas.

“Obviously we accept and agree that more houses need to be built, but they need to be built in the right places,” he said. “For example, in my view, they should be built on brownfield sites in city centres, those kinds of places first looking at maybe new towns, but what we should not be doing is ripping up the green belt.”

He added: “They are talking about huge chunks of the green belt, not the odd car park. You can’t just suddenly claim that a whole load of green belt is now called the grey belt and it’s OK to build on it. I mean, that’s just obviously a piece of nonsensical and shameless spin.”