{"id":211348,"date":"2025-01-09T08:40:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-09T08:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/09\/new-homes-scale-of-building-challenge-revealed-by-bbc-housing-tracker\/"},"modified":"2025-01-09T08:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T08:40:26","slug":"new-homes-scale-of-building-challenge-revealed-by-bbc-housing-tracker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/09\/new-homes-scale-of-building-challenge-revealed-by-bbc-housing-tracker\/","title":{"rendered":"New homes: Scale of building challenge revealed by BBC housing tracker"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Some local councils in England would need to see at least a five-fold increase in new housing to meet government targets, analysis by BBC Verify suggests.<\/p>\n

The BBC’s figures lay out the immense challenge Labour has set itself in government with its “milestone”<\/a> of building 1.5 million new homes in England over five years.<\/p>\n

In total, 16 local authorities across England have new annual targets that are five times or more what they have recently delivered.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has said<\/a> setting a specific target will “give the British people the power to hold our feet to the fire”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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With that in mind, the BBC has created a new online tool for tracking the government’s progress towards this key goal.<\/p>\n

Type in your postcode and see the house building situation in your own area.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The government has also set annual housing targets for each local authority <\/a>in England, based on what it judges their contribution to the overall total should be.<\/p>\n

The most demanding target is for the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, which has been set a target for new homes nearly 22 times its recent average.<\/p>\n

The target for Sevenoaks in Kent is five times what it has been delivering on average in recent years, while the target for Portsmouth is more than eight times the average.<\/p>\n

These specific targets will enable us to incorporate information into the tracker on what’s happening on house building in every district in England.<\/p>\n

It will show the number of homes added in an area and compare it with the local target set by ministers.<\/p>\n

Our postcode lookup tool also shows the share of planning applications for new homes granted permissions in an area in the most recent year there is data for, and compares it with the England-wide average rate, so you can judge whether your council is approving enough building plans.<\/p>\n

The tracker will be updated when relevant official data becomes available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The new government has described its housebuilding objective as “hugely ambitious” and that is no exaggeration.<\/p>\n

To deliver 1.5 million homes, defined as “net additional dwellings”, over five years implies a strike rate of about 300,000 a year – a number not achieved since the 1970s.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But while the England-wide target is highly ambitious in a historical context, the targets handed down to some local authorities are arguably even more so.<\/p>\n

To create our postcode tracker we processed local data on:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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