Can the Government Still Hit Its Housing Target?
The UK government's pledge to deliver 1.5 million new homes over the current parliamentary term has become one of the most scrutinised policy commitments in recent memory. With planning reform battles, a sluggish construction sector, and persistent affordability pressures, the question on every developer, buyer, and policy analyst's lips remains the same: is this target actually achievable? According to leading property consultancy Savills, the answer is possible — but only under the right conditions, including the introduction of a meaningful buyer support scheme.
The Scale of the Challenge
To understand why this target is so difficult to hit, it helps to look at where housebuilding currently stands. England has consistently failed to deliver enough new homes to meet demand for decades. In recent years, net additions to the housing stock have hovered well below what economists and housing experts say is needed to stabilise — let alone reduce — house prices relative to incomes.
The government's ambition to build 1.5 million homes over five years translates to roughly 300,000 new dwellings per year. That figure alone is historically unprecedented in the modern era. Even during the most productive periods of housebuilding in post-war Britain, sustained delivery at this level proved elusive. So from the outset, the target is stretching — and stretching considerably.
Planning reform, widely seen as the foundation of any serious housing delivery strategy, has dominated political debate. The government's proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) aim to unlock more land for development, reintroduce mandatory housing targets for local councils, and streamline the approval process for new schemes. In theory, these measures address one of the biggest bottlenecks in the system. In practice, local opposition, legal challenges, and the sheer complexity of the planning process mean that faster approvals do not automatically translate into faster builds.
What Savills Says About Delivery
Savills, one of the UK's most respected property agencies and research houses, has weighed in with a notably candid assessment. The firm acknowledges that the government's planning reforms are a step in the right direction, but warns that planning permissions alone will not be enough to drive delivery at the scale required. The bottleneck, Savills argues, has shifted — or more accurately, has always been — further down the pipeline: at the point of demand.
In other words, even if developers secure permissions to build more homes, those homes will not get built unless there are confident, financially capable buyers ready to purchase them. Housebuilders, particularly the large volume builders that account for a significant share of new-build completions, are commercially rational actors. They build to sell, and they calibrate their build-out rates to match the pace of sales. When buyer demand weakens — whether due to high mortgage rates, economic uncertainty, or poor consumer confidence — build rates slow accordingly, regardless of how many planning permissions are sitting on the shelf.
This is precisely why Savills has highlighted that a buyer support scheme could materially improve delivery. The logic is straightforward: if the government can stimulate demand among first-time buyers and those purchasing new-build properties specifically, developers will have greater commercial certainty to accelerate construction programmes. The ripple effect across the supply chain — from materials suppliers to skilled tradespeople — would be significant.
The Case for a New Buyer Support Scheme
The UK has a precedent for government-backed buyer incentives. Help to Buy, which ran from 2013 until its closure in 2023, provided equity loans to first-time buyers purchasing new-build homes. While it attracted criticism — particularly around the extent to which it inflated new-build prices — the scheme undeniably boosted transaction volumes and gave housebuilders the confidence to invest in large-scale developments during a period of market uncertainty.
With Help to Buy now gone and mortgage rates remaining elevated relative to the ultra-low environment of the 2010s, a meaningful chunk of prospective buyers — particularly younger people without access to the Bank of Mum and Dad — have been priced out of homeownership or are sitting on the fence. A successor scheme, carefully designed to avoid the price-inflationary pitfalls of its predecessor, could provide the demand-side stimulus the market needs.
What Might a New Scheme Look Like?
Any effective buyer support mechanism would likely need to address several key barriers simultaneously. Deposit size remains one of the most significant obstacles for first-time buyers, so a scheme offering equity loans or deposit guarantees would directly tackle this. Equally important would be eligibility criteria designed to focus support on genuinely affordable homes and genuine first-time purchasers, rather than broadly inflating prices across all new-build price points.
Mortgage guarantee schemes — where the government underwrites a portion of higher loan-to-value lending — represent another potential avenue, one that carries less direct fiscal cost than equity loan programmes. The existing Mortgage Guarantee Scheme offers a partial template, though its uptake has been modest compared to Help to Buy at its peak.
Other Factors That Will Determine Success
Beyond buyer support, several other variables will shape whether the 1.5 million target can be reached. The availability of skilled construction workers remains a structural constraint, with the sector already reporting labour shortages across multiple trades. Material costs, while easing from their post-pandemic peaks, continue to add pressure to development viability. And the viability of affordable housing obligations — the requirements placed on developers to include social and affordable rent homes within new schemes — remains a persistent source of tension between local authorities and the private sector.
Infrastructure delivery is another critical piece of the puzzle. New homes need roads, schools, GP surgeries, and public transport links to be viable communities rather than isolated estates. Coordinating this infrastructure investment alongside housebuilding at scale requires long-term planning and sustained public funding — neither of which is easily guaranteed in the current fiscal environment.
The Verdict
Can the government still hit its housing target? The short answer, according to the available evidence, is: possibly, but not without significant additional intervention. Planning reform is necessary but not sufficient. Supply-side measures must be matched with demand-side confidence if developers are to ramp up delivery at the pace required. Savills is right to flag that a buyer support scheme could be a material game-changer — it could be the policy lever that turns ambitious targets on paper into completed homes on the ground. The government would do well to heed that advice sooner rather than later, because the clock on this parliamentary term is already ticking.