LONDON (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will pledge to build a million homes before the next national election, tackling a housing shortage that has alienated some young voters who are often forced to pay high rents instead of buying.
Ahead of elections expected next year, Sunak’s ruling Conservative Party has seen a sharp drop in support among young voters frustrated with not being able to own their own home and struggling with high childcare costs.
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Housing has long been an area of contention for the Conservative Party, which is divided between lawmakers in rural areas, who don’t want to see more construction and want to protect land protected by green belts, and lawmakers in more urban areas, who want to see more homes built fast.
Housing Secretary Michael Gove will set out further measures on Monday to unblock the planning system and build homes in the “right places” with local consent to meet the 2019 target of one million homes. election.
Sunak said his government would focus on building in inner-city areas with the highest demand, including a new suburb in Cambridge, to boost its role as a science centre.
“Today I can confirm that we will deliver on our manifesto commitment to build 1 million homes in this parliament. A beautiful new home for 1 million families in every corner of our country,” Sunak said, using the term to refer to the time between the 2019 election and the next vote.
“We will not achieve this by building concrete in the countryside – our plan is to build suitable housing where it is needed most and where there is local support in the heart of Britain’s big cities,” he said in a statement.
The housing plan is Sunak’s latest attempt to narrow the opposition Labor Party’s huge lead in opinion polls after Friday’s surprise victory in a so-called by-election outside central London, giving him some breathing room.
In June, UK House Construction rose at the fastest rate since the early two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a survey this month showed, depressing demand and weighing on the wider construction sector.
Earlier this month, a parliamentary committee said the government was on track to deliver 1m new homes but was not expected to deliver on its promise to build 19,000 net new homes per year by the mid-2019s, largely because of uncertainty over planning policy reforms.
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