Rayner to set out overhaul of planning rules to clear path for new social housing

Angela Rayner will unveil an overhaul of planning rules next week as Labour seeks to clear a path to building 1.5 million homes in five years.

The deputy prime minister and housing secretary said that “delivering social and affordable houses at scale” is her “number one priority”.

But the planning system should be “a launchpad” rather than a “millstone” dragging down the housing market, she wrote in The Observer .

The overhaul, to be announced before MPs leave for summer recess, will include bringing back mandatory housing targets that were scrapped by the previous government and introducing “golden rules” to ensure development works for local people and protects nature, Ms Rayner said.

“We plan to set out in detail more of these early and important changes in an updated National Planning Policy Framework next week,” she wrote.

The deputy PM said the government was committed to preserving the green belt and will prioritise building on the so-called grey belt – green belt land that has previously been developed and includes disused car parks and wasteland.

She also said that Labour knew there was a housing emergency when they came into power, but that “lurking under each stone we lift” is “a frankly scandalous legacy” left by their Conservative predecessors.

Speaking to The Mirror , Ms Rayner said: “We knew our country was creaking in the eye of the storm but since taking office we’ve inspected the foundations and found they’ve been left to rot by Tory negligence. Housing is broken.

“The Tories were afraid of their own shadows, running from their own members and in thrall to blockers.

“This Labour Government isn’t afraid of making hard decisions in the national interest to power growth in every part of the country.

“We’ll take the tough choices to unblock the planning system and make it a reality. When it comes to housebuilding, we will no longer be asking ‘if’, but ‘how’.”

Ms Rayner’s planning announcement will come as chancellor Rachel Reeves is expected to unveil a black hole in the public finances of around £20 billion.

Ms Reeves will outline the spending inheritance left by the Tories when she presents the results of a Treasury audit to parliament on Monday.

A government spokesperson said the audit had shown “the previous government made significant funding commitments for this financial year without knowing where the money would come from”.

The spokesperson added: “The assessment will show that Britain is broke and broken – revealing the mess that populist politics has made of the economy and public services.”

The chancellor is expected to approve above-inflation pay rises for millions of public sector workers in response to the recommendations of independent pay review bodies.

Teachers and some 1.3 million NHS staff could be in line for a 5.5 per cent pay boost, which could cost about £3.5 billion more than had been budgeted for.

This could rise to about £10 billion if other pay review bodies give similar advice on workforces such as police and prisons officers and doctors and dentists, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

As this cost has not been fully budgeted for in current plans, the cash would have to be raised through existing fiscal headroom, tweaking fiscal rules or tax increases.

Max Mosley, senior economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), said Ms Reeves had inherited “an underinvested economy with underfunded public services with little to no room to borrow to fix these systemic issues”.

He said many would sympathise with the chancellor’s challenge but said the “doom loop” was self-imposed due to the chancellor’s own restrictive fiscal rules.

He called for Ms Reeves to loosen the fiscal rules to allow the government room to invest in growing Britain’s economy.

Mr Mosley told The Independent : “Whilst the OBR publishes the headline trajectory for public finances and throughout the election organisations like the NIESR offered repeated warnings about what they were set to inherit, it was always going to be the case that the true scale of the challenge would only really be known once they entered government.”

Any tax hikes to meet the costs facing Ms Reeves would not be expected before the autumn budget, the date of which Ms Reeves is also set to announce on Monday.

Labour has ruled out lifting income tax, VAT , national insurance and corporation tax, potentially leaving changes to pensions relief and capital gains and inheritance levies on the table.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “After 14 years of Conservative failure, the Labour Party is calling time on the sticking-plaster politics of populism.

“The electorate sent this changed Labour Party to government with a clear mandate to restore economic stability, grow the economy and build the homes we need.

“We will not shy away from being honest with the public about the reality of what we have inherited. We are calling time on the false promises that British people have had to put up with and we will do what it takes to fix Britain.”