Labour ‘needs 300 new builders a day’ to hit home target – but numbers are falling

Andy Burnham inherits a major challenge with housebuilding targets (Picture: Temilade Adelaja – WPA Pool/Getty Images)

Andy Burnham’s government needs 300 people to join the construction workforce each day to reach its housebuilding target, new research has found – but instead, it’s losing 200 a day.

Labour set out its ambition to build 1.5 million new homes in England ‘over the next parliament’ in its 2024 manifesto.

However, that target is looking increasingly hard to reach, with just 143,110 houses built last year – almost 10,000 fewer than the previous year, and the lowest annual total since 2015/16.

And now, researchers at Land Value Calculator (LVC) have found that hundreds of thousands more workers will be needed in the construction sector if the government is to have any hope of success.

To hit 1.5 million homes by July 2029 – around the time when the current parliament is set to end – 1,008 new homes will be needed every day.

The current rate is 547 a day, meaning delivery must be ramped up by 84%.

Using data from the Office for National Statistics, the researchers calculated that would require around 345,000 more workers by July 2029, working out at around 300 each day.

The bad news for Housing Secretary Angela Rayner is the construction workforce reduced by 78,878 in the past year, according to the ONS, meaning 200 workers were lost each day.

An LVC spokesperson said: ‘That is not a housing programme, it is a
staffing shortage with a housing target attached.’

Fewer new homes were built last year compared to the year before (Picture: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Construction industry body CITB predicts the size of the workforce in England will fall by 0.9% this year before growing slightly each year until the end of the decade.

However, numbers in 2030 are still expected to remain below its 2019 level, before the disruption of the Covid pandemic and Brexit.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Community and Local Government said a skills package has been launched to bring new workers into the industry.

They said: ‘We’re backing the construction sector with £625 million to bring in up to 60,000 construction workers, and providing an additional £1.2 billion for skills so we can train even more builders by 2029.

‘Alongside our planning reforms and the £16 billion National Housing Bank this will ensure we build the homes this country needs.’

Rayner – who first implemented the 1.5 million-home target after the general election as housing secretary before resigning in September 2025 – has confirmed it is remains her aim after returning to the role under Burnham.

Speaking to the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 last month, she said: ‘That commitment was very challenging before when I came into government.

‘It’s certainly got more challenging, and we’ve seen things like construction costs go up, which has had a real negative impact on that.

‘But I’m not dropping it. I’m just saying that it is a really difficult stretch target.’

Angela Rayner returned to the housing brief under Andy Burnham (Picture: Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The housing secretary said keeping the target was ‘like me saying I’m going to run the London Marathon in under five hours’, adding: ‘That would be a real challenge for me, but I’d do it.’

New PM Burnham has also pledged to oversee the biggest council housebuilding programme seen since the post-war period.

In the 35 years after the Second World War, more than 4.4 million council houses were built with 200,000 in 1954 alone, according to the University of the Built Environment.

While major changes to the planning system have now become law, the government also faces pressure from rising construction costs and global economic issues such as those stemming from the Iran war.

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