A new lens on fixing Britain’s housing crisis

It is common knowledge that we haven’t built enough homes in this country for at least 40 years. That failure has had many consequences. In the run-up to the last election, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves rightly identified that getting Britain building again is key to addressing our anaemic levels of growth (though they have thus far failed to do much about it).

But housing supply remains well below what is needed to meet the government’s ambition of 1.5 million homes over this Parliament. England added just 208,600 net additional homes in 2024-25. The pipeline is also weakening, with planning permission granted for only 209,781 homes in the year to September 2025, the lowest 12-month total since 2013.

High housing costs disincentivise people from moving elsewhere for work, leading to a less flexible labour market. The lack of homes to rent is behind the rising bill local councils are paying for temporary accommodation, which is putting local government under such financial strain.

It is all but impossible for young people to get on the housing ladder in many parts of the country without help from the ‘bank of mum and dad’ (or the ‘bank of grandma and grandad’). Together with the rip-off of plan student loans, that is giving rise to a deep and justified sense of inter-generational unfairness.

The country needs practical ideas – from the worlds of business and politics – to solve this housing crisis so that a serious government could get on and implement them, with honesty that this problem so long in the making can’t be solved overnight. The last thing we need is more of the same sterile debates about targets and blaming one government or another.

That’s why Prosper UK is launching a commission to identify solutions to the housing crisis. We have brought together a group of experts who know the industry inside out and have a proven record of delivery. From the industry we have leaders from Cordia UK, Barrott Redrow Group, Savills, Clarion Housing Group, Arcadis and experts from DLA Piper, Rural & Urban Strategic, economist Tim Leunig and former housing minister Mark Prisk.

Housing lies at the heart of so many of the problems this country faces. If we want to get the economy growing, we need to get the housing market moving. If we want to tackle intergenerational fairness, we need to make it more affordable to get on the housing ladder.

If we want to tackle high unemployment, we need to give people confidence that they can move to a different part of the country and easily find somewhere to live. And, if want to ease the financial pressure on local government, we need to do something about the huge cost of temporary accommodation.

We’ve assembled an amazing commission team with decades of experience in this sector, who will come up with practical policies to fix our broken housing market. We set up Prosper UK because we believe our politics can do better, providing considered and practical policies, focusing on the economic growth that will help everyone in this country to prosper.

This commission on housing is our first step towards achieving that goal.