Is This Man A Radical As He Demands: Scrap The Controls, Sell Homes, Build More?

A housing development that would have been highly profitable in 2020 would now lose a fortune. Why? Regulation, policy and tax. What is Lord Barwell’s plan to reverse this and Get Britain Building?

The Prosper UK Housing Commission has found that a 300-home Build to Rent scheme that would have made an £8 million profit in 2020 would now lose £6 million.

The Commission brought together experts from across the housing sector, including planners, housebuilders, investors, housing association executives, land agents and economists. It is chaired by former Housing Minister and Downing Street Chief of Staff Gavin Barwell.

This week it published a report entitled ‘Solving the Housing Crisis: A Plan to Make Homes More Affordable in Every Postcode’.

Housing held back

The report says housebuilding is held back on two fronts that have to be tackled together:

• Weak consumer confidence means builders cannot sell the homes they are already building.
• With costs rising while prices stay flat, many schemes with planning permission are no longer viable.

Party lines

At the Labour Party Conference, the government announced Your First Home, a shared equity scheme for first-time buyers of new homes, which might address demand (even with a ‘subsidy’, homes are still expensive).

Meanwhile, the Conservatives pledged to repeal Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 which allows local planning authorities to make developers pay heftily to implement environmental measures. Removing Section 106 might remove the financial barriers to viability.

Radical

The report goes further than either party, setting out a package that tackles demand and viability together and adds measures to increase supply.

At the launch of the report on 12 October Gavin Barwell said: “I’m pleased that even before the report was published, the government adopted one of our recommendations and the Conservatives have said they would implement another.

“Yet our recommendations are not ‘pick n mix’. Boosting demand without increasing supply will help a few people at the expense of everyone else. Tackling viability without tackling demand will make little difference. That is the view of the diverse group of industry experts who produced this report.”

£76,000 rise

Half the £76,000 rise in the cost of building a new home since 2020 comes from regulation, policy and tax. In the year to September 2025, planning permission was granted for 209,781 homes in England, the lowest since 2013.

At the end of 2025, a record 176,130 children in England were living in temporary accommodation.

The Commission’s recommendations

Viability: Freeze new regulatory burdens for at least three years; introduce a two-part test for obligations on new housing; limit Section 106 to what a development itself needs.

Demand: A temporary, targeted shared equity scheme for first-time buyers of new, energy-efficient homes, capped at around a fifth of sales per site and funded by an industry access fee.

Supply: A National Planning Service for major applications; a national Green Belt review that protects land preventing sprawl and settlements merging; and higher-density development as standard.

Renting: Cut stamp duty on Build to Rent developments and standardise their Section 106 agreements; rule out rent controls in law; and establish a Public Build to Rent programme using public land to deliver more social rent homes.

Get people in homes

Barwell said: Prosper UK was set up to get the UK growing again and to be honest with voters about the difficult choices that takes. Our report argues that building the homes the country needs is central to unlocking economic growth and that people buying new homes should not have to pay for problems that belong to everyone.

“Despite its welcome reforms of the planning system and funding for affordable housing, the government is falling far short of its ambition to build 1.5 million homes in five years. The latest figures, particularly in London, are little short of catastrophic. The victims are all around us. A few are sleeping rough, yet most are hidden, stuck in temporary accommodation or unable to buy a home as their parents did.

“Our housing crisis has been building for nearly 50 years and there is no silver bullet. Some of what we recommend won’t be popular but unless we attack the problem from every angle it will only get worse.”

Who else said what?

Lucian Cook, Commission member and Director of Residential Research at Savills, said: “There is no quick fix for the UK housing market but there is still plenty that can be done to address the issues. A bold holistic view is needed more than ever, if we are to look to deliver more homes throughout the economic and political cycles and make more efficient use of the homes we already have.”

Richard Cook, Commission member and Chief Development Officer at Clarion Housing Group, said: “The housing crisis needs all ideas and policies to be considered. The work we have done with Prosper UK provides more solutions that, if implemented, will make a significant difference in meeting the challenge.”

Permacrisis

Jackie Sadek, a member of the Commission and author of Broken Homes – Britain’s Housing Crisis: Facts, Factoids and Fixes, said: “The permacrisis in housing in our country is grossly hobbling our economy and selling our young people short. The social and fiscal costs are immense. We need to give this urgent attention, not speeches and slogans. The Commission has produced a systemic, long-term, workable plan to increase supply and make housing more affordable in every postcode.”

Picture with thanks to the House of Lords: The Right Honourable Lord Gavin Laurence Barwell is a current member of the House of Lords.

www.prosperuk.com