Your editorial (16 February) correctly identifies the business model of private housing developers as the large hole at the centre of Labour’s ambitious plan to build 1.5m new homes by the end of this parliament. In recent years, most large developers have been doing very well in terms of profit margins and shareholder returns without having to increase their output at all. Why should they bother to do more?
The only way the government will get close to its target is by stumping up the money for investment in new social homes, exerting stronger control over increasing land values along the way. It was a lesson learned nearly 80 years ago by Aneurin Bevan. In his stint as housing minister, the postwar Labour government built more than 160,000 council homes a year – in the teeth of acute austerity.
