Housing secretary seeks to increase building

September 20, 2025 by Brendan O'Neill

House building

News

Property Market

The new Housing Secretary has announced that he is seeking a major increase in building work, and he has put out a call to house-builders and property developers to that end.

Steve Reed has started in his job by inviting house-builders and developers to a policy roundtable. The purpose of this was to identify ways of getting more houses built in Britain and eliminating factors that stand in the way of that, such as overly complicated planning laws. Now, Reed has stated that people can expect to see a raft of new policies announced over the next few months.

Among them are likely to be the construction of a number of new towns and the introduction of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. This has the potential to be a game-changing piece of legislation for a country that has consistently failed to build enough houses.

Reed also pointed out that the Government has already made moves to boost the number of homes built. He cited the mandatory housing targets it has set for local authorities and the New Homes Accelerator as examples. The latter legislation has got work on 100,000 homes underway.

Another example is the Social and Affordable Homes Programme that has received £39 billion of funding.

According to Mortgage Solutions, Reed said:

“We are doubling down on our plans to unleash one of the biggest eras of building in our country’s history and we are backing the builders all the way.”

This would be welcomed by mortgage advisors with CeMAP training, who have been urging more building for years.