Simon Dudley: Why 300,000 homes a year won’t fix Britain’s housing crisis

Simon Dudley is Former Chair of Homes England and Former Leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead. He is a Senior Fellow at Onward and Chair of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation

We’ve heard it for years: 300,000 homes a year. It’s become political wallpaper – the assumed benchmark for ambition on housing. But that number, repeated so often it’s practically sacred, is simply not enough.

If we’re serious about fixing Britain’s housing crisis – a crisis that is throttling productivity, crushing aspiration, and blighting lives – we need to start thinking far, far bigger.

The Centre for Cities’ infamous housebuilding crisis report makes this painfully clear. Britain has a backlog of 4.3 million missing homes compared to the average European country. To clear this in 25 years, we’d need to build 442,000 homes a year. To clear it in a decade? 654,000 homes a year in England alone.

Let that sink in. And then ask yourself why is the Labour Government, with its supposed zeal for housebuilding, clinging to 300,000? Why is their housing minister – Matthew Pennycook – still afraid to call himself a YIMBY?

At the recent Conservative YIMBY research launch – we made it clear: our party must reclaim the mantle of homeownership. That starts by being honest about the scale of the problem. It was also clear at the UKREiiF conference in Leeds, where appetite for building – especially from the private sector – was palpable. The Housing Secretary, Angela Rayner gave a performatively warm speech to the industry – but just days later, she was publicly attacking housebuilders, telling them to “get on and build” as if they were the problem.

That kind of political whiplash undermines confidence and delays delivery.

We cannot afford this kind of incoherence. Britain’s planning system, dating back to the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act, is one of the greatest handbrakes on growth in the developed world. Since that Act was introduced, annual housing growth has more than halved – from 2 per cent to just 1.2 per cent. Prices have skyrocketed, rents have soared, and the dream of homeownership has become a fantasy for millions.

As leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, I saw first-hand what happens when you say yes to growth. We built homes, regenerated our high streets, and won support for doing so, holding the council in the 2019 local elections – one of the few Conservative administrations in the country to do so.

It may come as a shock to some, but the public, contrary to the received wisdom in Whitehall, likes new homes – when they come with vision, infrastructure, and design. But they are sick of political cowardice and bureaucratic inertia.

Some will say immigration is the real problem – and they’re right to point out that both legal and illegal migration have been allowed to reach completely unmanageable, unacceptable levels. But even if we returned to sane, sustainable net migration levels tomorrow, we’d still face a colossal housing deficit built up over decades. This crisis wasn’t caused by newcomers – it was caused by a broken planning system and decades of political failure to build.

As former Chair of Homes England, I saw how much time and resource is soaked up by a big fat quango that too often acts as a sponge for MHCLG’s capital funding rather than a catalyst for serious reform. As the current Chair of the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, I see the immense latent potential waiting to be unlocked – if only we could build at the pace and scale Britain so desperately needs.

As Onward, under the leadership of the fantastic Sir Simon Clarke, points out – this is not sustainable. Britain’s chronic underbuilding is now a generational betrayal and our stagnation stems from one thing: we can’t build. Not homes, not railways, not reservoirs, not labs, not data centres.

Each mile of HS2 costs four times more than the Naples–Bari high-speed line. Our last reservoir was built in 1992. Cambridge is being choked because new homes there are unlawful without new water infrastructure.

How did we get here? How did we become a country where building anything feels impossible?

We are now paying the price. High housing costs choke off opportunity. The average young family can’t afford to live anywhere near where the best jobs are. We’re losing productivity and talent. Entire sectors – from life sciences in Cambridge to creative industries near Pinewood – are being held back.

We need the courage to say the unsayable: 300,000 homes is not ambitious – it’s the bare minimum. The Government must show ambition that matches the scale of the problem.

And we Conservatives must find our mettle again, and reclaim our identity as the party of homeownership, prosperity, and growth.

It is time for boldness. Time to break the bottleneck. Time to get Britain building again.