City Forum: Beyond housing targets

Are local housing targets really the answer to delivering homes where people need them?

Driving the new government's planning reforms is the ambition to build 1.5 million new houses over the course of the Parliament – equating to 300,000 per year over five years. This increase in housing supply is intended to help alleviate the housing crisis, which has seen housing costs spiral to unaffordable levels for countless families, young people unable to get on the housing ladder, a tragic rise in homelessness and many people stuck in houses that are in poor condition or not suitable for their needs.

Local authorities have been issued with revised, in most instances increased, housing targets for their areas, which they are now legally obliged to meet. However, even with the major planning reforms, such as easing restrictions on build on the green belt, there are serious questions about the feasibility of meeting these targets at both local and national levels. In 2022–23, just under 235,000 houses were completed, still down on the numbers achieved before the pandemic. To find the last time the country has delivered 300,000 house a year, one has to go back to the mid-1970s, when local authorities were building 100,000 homes a year. The private sector, which the government is depending on to achieve its target, has never delivered close to it.

Even if the government's ambitious targets are met, there are the arguably even more fundamental questions of what types of housing they will produce, where it will be located, how it might be built, and whether this will help make housing more financially accessible. How will, moreover, national planning policies conceived, it would seem, for London and the South East play out in Newcastle and the North East? Will local housing targets really deliver homes where people need them? And, if not, what will? Our panel discuss.

Speakers

Aidan Dobinson Booth – From the front-line of the housing crisis and “punk rock of public service,” with over 20 years’ experience of working as a Local Authority Planning Officer in the region.

Abigail Schoneboom – Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. Co-author of The Future for Planners: Commercialisation, Professionalism and the Public Interest in the UK (Policy Press, 2024).

This event was originally scheduled for 5 December 2025.

City Forum

A monthly space to explore a range of issues that shape our experience of the city today. This season we explore what the government’s planning reforms mean for Tyneside.

Host or Publisher Farrell Centre