Thursday briefing: Has Labour laid the foundations for fixing Britain’s housing crisis?

Good morning.

Amid a years-long housing crisis, the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has brought the Labour government’s housing policy to the forefront of the political agenda, including an announcement on

Wednesday of an additional £350m to fund affordable housing

. This money comes on top of the £500m already pledged in the autumn budget, and all aimed at delivering 1.5m new homes over the next five years.

Labour has been explicit in its commitment to tackling the country’s longstanding housing crisis. “I will not hesitate to do what it takes to build 1.5m new homes over five years and deliver the biggest boost in social and affordable housebuilding in a generation,” Rayner said. Keir Starmer, for his part, has said he will not allow “regulators, blockers [and] bureaucrats” to stand in the way of development. Meanwhile, rogue landlords in England will face restrictions on the amount of housing benefit they can receive if their properties fail to meet acceptable standards.

This latest funding announcement comes ahead of the planning and infrastructure bill, set to be formally introduced next month. It is expected to reinstate housing targets for local councils, accelerate the construction of major housing developments, and establish a taskforce to drive the creation of new towns. Today’s newsletter is a run-through of what the government has said so far on the issue – and whether any of it is enough to make a difference.

Five big stories

1. Inflation

   | Britain’s economy

   unexpectedly grew in the final three months

   of last year, official figures show, easing pressure on the chancellor, Rachel Reeves. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show gross domestic product rose by 0.1% in the fourth quarter of 2024, beating the forecasts of City economists and the Bank of England for a decline of 0.1%.

2. Ukraine

   | Donald Trump said he and Vladimir Putin had agreed to

   begin negotiations to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine

   , later adding that it was unlikely Kyiv would win back all its territory or join Nato if a deal is to be reached.

3. Middle East

   | Arab mediators scrambled to save the Gaza ceasefire as the

   Israeli military bolstered troop and tank deployments

   to the strip’s periphery in advance of the possibility the truce breaks down this weekend.

4. UK news

   | Andrew Malkinson

   is to be given a payout

   by the Ministry of Justice, more than a year and a half after the court of appeal declared his innocence. Malkinson, who spent 17 years in prison for a rape in Greater Manchester that he did not commit, was cleared in July 2023.

5. Ineos Group

   | Sir Jim Ratcliffe faces

   growing concerns over the financial health

   of his chemicals empire as its debt pile is forecast to reach almost €12bn (£10bn) this year and his sporting interests including Manchester United and New Zealand rugby hit crisis point.

In depth: A house built on sand?

To understand the government’s urgency, here are some numbers that outline the depth of the housing crisis. Nearly 160,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. More than 6,000 families with children are living in B&Bs. Councils in England spent over £1bn on housing homeless families in temporary accommodation – a 50% rise year-on-year. And 1.3 million people are languishing on social housing waiting lists.

Private rents have continued to rise, surging past inflation to set by 9.2% in England – in London it was 11.2%, the fastest annual pace since records began in 2006. And

according to the ONS,

only the richest 10% of households can afford to buy an average-priced home in England, making housing stock nationwide unaffordable. House prices hit a record high this week, according to Halifax.

Nearly a million children in the UK are at risk of falling into poverty or will face financial hardship as a result of rising rents, shortfalls in government housing support and underinvestment in new social housing by March 2026,

according to the Institute for Public Policy Research

.

This crisis has been years in the making. Will the government’s ambitions be enough, and will they follow through with bold enough change?

***

What is the government proposing?

Big investment.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, already pledged to invest £500m for 5,000 affordable homes during the autumn budgets. The overall programme is worth £11.5bn and is expected to result in up to 130,000 new affordable homes by 2026.

‘Bulldoze through planning laws’.

It’s all about tearing up the rulebook and building more than ever before. To kickstart building, the government is proposing designating low quality green belt land as “grey belt”, which would open up more land for development. They are also planning on releasing stringent individual targets for councils and planning authorities and Reeves has recently proposed a “zoning scheme”, which would hand housebuilders quicker access to build new homes around England’s commuter train stations.

Building 12 new towns

. Starmer announced on Wednesday that up to

a dozen new towns

will be constructed by the next election, each with the potential for at least 10,000 homes with accompanying infrastructure. The government plans to push this through by sweeping away environmental regulations and red tape.

***

The obstacles

Many observers are still sceptical about the government’s 1.5m goal.

Streamlining planning rules may not be enough. Many other factors, from interest rates and market incentives, are also important. The head of Britain’s largest housebuilding company, Barratt Redrow,

told the Guardian

there is a severe skills shortage, an ageing workforce (a quarter of tradespeople are over 50) and complications from Brexit that make building housing difficult. So even if there are fewer rules standing in the way of building, the construction sector may not be in the position to buy up land and get building.

Ripping up all the rules might be a bad idea.

Finding space to build all these new houses is not easy and often they are constructed in less than perfect locations. Most worryingly, more than 100,000 new homes will be built on the highest-risk flood zones in England in the next five years,

according to Guardian analysis

.

Substandard housing stock.

Building new houses is important but many housing campaigners stress the urgency of addressing inadequate or poor quality housing that people are living in now. The government is

delaying the implementation of Awaab’s law

, which would make social landlords in England fix dangerous hazards quickly. These landlords now have until 2027 before they have to start fixing all dangerous hazards, including asbestos, exposure to lead or radiation and contaminated water supplies.

***

Is it enough?

One report

indicated that England would require the construction of at least 90,000 social rent homes annually for a decade to eliminate social housing waiting lists. And

analysis by the BBC

suggests that some local councils in England would need to see at least a fivefold increase in new housing to meet government targets – but many cash-strapped councils face bankruptcy over the next five years.

Fiona Fletcher-Smith,

chief executive of L&Q, one of the UK’s largest housing associations, told the BBC that the money is welcome – but it also “won’t touch the sides”.

What else we’ve been reading

• “It will take the biggest diplomatic effort the world has ever seen” – as Donald Trump throws around thoughtless rhetoric on emptying

  Gaza

  , disaster recovery expert Lucy Easthope lays out exactly what it will take – and how long – to rebuild the war-torn region

  in this stark piece

  .

  Charlie Lindlar, acting deputy editor, newsletters

• Nesrine Malik is great this week

  in this week’s Long Wave newsletter

  on the global implications of Donald Trump’s suspension of

  USAid

  . The speed of the freeze and its fallout “raises questions about the wisdom of depending so profoundly on a country that has proven to be so unreliable”, she writes. For even more from Nesrine, catch up with Today in Focus below.

  Nimo

• In an attempt to understand how they infiltrated our daily lives, Emma Beddington attempted to go one month without

  single-use plastics

  . How did it go? “It nearly broke me,” she writes

  in this fascinating feature

  .

  Charlie

• To understand the latest on

  Gaza’s faltering ceasefire

  ,

  read Bethan McKernan’s

  brilliant analysis on the difficult choices that lay ahead for Hamas and what it could mean for peace in the besieged strip.

  Nimo

• Ahead of the highly anticipated third season of

  The White Lotus

  , the New Yorker

  has a nice profile

  (£) of show creator Mike White and his vision for the ever-evolving anthology drama.

  Charlie

Sport

Football

| The final derby at Goodison Park ended in a 2-2 draw after

Everton’s James Tarkowski pegged back Liverpool

in the dying seconds. Daizen Maeda’s header gave Celtic hope for the second leg of their Champions League playoff in a

2-1 home defeat by Bayern Munich

.

Cricket

| Jos Buttler was left to defend his team from accusations of not training enough after another hammering saw them complete a poor trip to India. India

356 beat England 214 by 142 runs

.

Football

| Arsenal’s worst fears have been realised with Kai Havertz

set to miss the rest of the season

with a hamstring injury, leaving Mikel Arteta’s side without a recognised centre-forward in a major blow to their Premier League title hopes.

The front pages

The

Guardian

leads with “Trump says he has opened talks with Putin to end war in Ukraine” and the

Times

has “Trump and Putin start Ukraine peace talks”. The

Mail’s

version: “Trump’s shock call with Putin to end the war – but will peace deal betray Ukraine?” while the

Daily Mirror

calls it a “Conflict breakthrough … Trump: Putin’s ready for peace talks”. The

Financial Times

goes with “Trump says US and Russia will start talks on Ukraine war ‘immediately’”. The Tory leader sounds Trumpish on the front of the

Express

: “Kemi: we need to put our national interest first”. “Join a terror group, stay in the UK” – the

Telegraph

splashes on an asylum case. Top story in the

i

is “Cabinet ministers at risk as Starmer plans his first reshuffle to jumpstart Labour” while there’s a “TOTAL booze ban” at the World Cup in Saudi Arabia, to the

Metro’s

incredulity.

Today in Focus

What Trump’s assault on USAid means for the world

What will the world look like

without US foreign assistance

? Nesrine Malik reports

Cartoon of the day | Artist Name

The Upside

A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad

When Ismail Einashe stepped off a plane from Somalia aged 10 at London’s Heathrow airport, he did so with little grasp of the English language and even less of the “walking machines” that an elderly native back in Addis Ababa had spoken of.

His new life would introduce him to more than just escalators, salt and vinegar crisps, and East 17, however. As our inspiring

A moment that made me

story reveals, it would also teach him about embracing life in a whole new light.

Sign up here

for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday

Bored at work?

And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.

• Quick crossword

• Cryptic crossword

• Wordiply