Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has put housebuilding at the heart of the government’s mission to kickstart economic growth and tackle the housing crisis by building 1.5m new homes in England over the next five years. However, it relies on local authorities adopting targets for new privately-built housing developments in their areas and the number of dissenters are growing.

Central Bedfordshire Council has warned the area would be left absolutely swamped with growth that the infrastructure just cannot support and even Labour run Local Authorities have described the proposed changes as very challenging, if not impossible to achieve, or that the plans were wholly unrealistic

Councils are responsible for granting planning permission for new homes – but they mostly rely on the private sector to build the properties, something many local authorities said the government’s new targets did not take into account.

Not every council was critical though, and despite the planned changes seeing Oxford having to build an additional 24,000 homes, Louise Upton, the local cabinet member for planning at Oxford City Council, said the council could accommodate 10,000 of those, and that it hoped the new rules would make it more likely that surrounding councils would take on the other 14,000. Louise said When you are a tightly constrained city like ours is, actually bursting at the seams, you need your surrounding districts to collaborate with you to get the housing that you need, She added So I think the government’s plan for these new homes is ambitious, but it is achievable. It has to be achievable.