Build, build, build: How do we solve the housing crisis?

This debate is part of Battle of Ideas North 2026.

For most of this century there’s been a pervasive sense of a housing crisis. Despite many promises to find solutions, chronic undersupply of new homes now fuels spiralling property prices and rents, pushing costs far beyond what is affordable to ordinary people. The consequences are wide-ranging: many young people still live with their parents while falling birth rates are associated with the lack of family homes; those who do move out face increased poverty and rising debt; increasing numbers choose emigration, creating a twenty-first century brain drain.

But are there now causes for optimism? The Labour government came to power on the mantra of ‘build, build, build’, even on the sacred green belt. Last year, then housing minister Angela Rayner published her Social and Affordable Homes plan to deliver 300,000 new homes annually. Others welcome the growth of the YIMBY – ‘yes in my backyard’ – movement as a sign that more young people now embrace development.

Meanwhile, 60 years on from the development of Milton Keynes, Britain’s last new town, plans have emerged for a new ‘forest city’ near Cambridge that tries to satisfy demand for growth while pacifying those environmental concerns. Yet critics point out that Labour is already massively behind on its promises to deliver 1.5million new homes before 2029.

So, are we any closer to a solution? Does the root cause of undersupply lie in the collapse of public provision, failure in the private sector, over-regulation, pressure from immigration or a refusal of communities and local authorities to sanction new land for building on? Or is the real problem a political vacuum of ideas?