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National and local policies will be given equal power when deciding whether developments are given the go-ahead, rather than local decision-makers being overruled.
National Development Management Policies are upcoming government guidelines for planning decisions first legislated for by the previous Conservative government in 2023.
They are intended to boost housebuilding by giving local authorities more national guidance on what housing is needed, potentially preventing nimbyism, though the government seemingly won’t look to overrule local authorities as much as initially thought.
At a housing, communities and local government select committee session this week, housing secretary Steve Reed said the national policy will be non-statutory.
Matt Morris, director of Nexus Planning, said “the confirmation that National Development Management Policies will be non-statutory is particularly significant.
Many in the sector had expected [them] to have primacy over Local Plans following the changes made in the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act.
This shift means they will instead sit at the same level as the National Planning Policy Framework, and for some will feel like a missed opportunity to secure greater consistency and clarity in decision-making.”
The National Planning Policy Framework will be updated before Christmas, to sit alongside National Development Management Policies.
Lack of demand ‘to blame’ for slow housebuilding
The main reason the government is missing the 1.5 million housebuilding target is a lack of demand, rather than the root cause being a lack of workers.
That is according to Dr David Crosthwaite, chief economist at the Building Cost Information Service (BCIS).
He was responding to a claim by the Construction Plant Hire Association, with Oxford Economics, that 160,000 more builders are required for Labour to meet its housebuilding targets.
Crosthwaite said “developers only build at the rate homes can be sold, and buyer confidence is currently subdued by high borrowing costs, limited incentives and uncertainty over market stability.
Without a steady pipeline of demand, builders won’t expand their workforce or invest in training at the pace government targets assume.
A shortfall of workers, in that sense, is as much a symptom of weak demand as it is a cause of the reduced delivery volumes we’re seeing.
Government policy should focus on restoring market confidence, for example by supporting first-time buyers and accelerating investment in infrastructure that unlocks new sites.
That would give developers and contractors the visibility they need to scale up capacity sustainably.”
Some 500,000 builders are expected to retire in the next 15 years, so there’s a dire need for new blood in the industry, while builders are typically in their only 50s.
The number of workers in the industry is currently going backwards year-on-year.
The only way to make demand less of a big issue would be to increase levels of publicly produced housing, Crosthwaite explained.
Crosthwaite said “the only way that the government could really influence supply to the degree it seems to be hoping to with its 1.5 million target would be to go back to when local authorities had their own in-house construction teams – direct labour organisations – that could respond to policy priorities.
Today, delivery depends almost entirely on private developers, who can turn the tap on or off according to market conditions. The government, by contrast, no longer has that ability.
Unless the government is prepared to consider the broader question of who builds our homes, and how skills, productivity and demand all interlink, policy targets risk misaligning with delivery capacity.”
Developers are struggling to sell new-builds
Estate agency Chestertons has warned that political and economic uncertainty and concerns about the upcoming Budget have led to developers experience a downturn in sales activity for newly built homes.
This now means there is a higher than usual volume of completed new homes available for sale, the agent said.
According to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, an estimated 89,100 net additional homes have been delivered in England between 1 April 2025 and 14 September 2025 alone.
Watson Briggs, head of new homes sales at Chestertons, said “we have seen a 21% decrease in new buyer enquiries for new homes this year whilst developers carried on completing their projects. This has resulted in a momentary imbalance of supply and demand for completed new build Homes so there has really never been a better time to buy.
As developers need to meet their sales targets before the end of the year, buyers are in a particularly strong position to negotiate incentives and price reduction of up to 12%. In addition, house hunters have the opportunity to view the properties in person as they are fully completed and ready to move into rather than being off-plan.”
Chestertons notes that, despite fewer new enquiries, existing house hunters have caught wind of the market changing in their favour which resulted in the agency’s New Homes division achieve a 71% increase in sales in October vs the same month last year.
Brigss added “fact of the matter is that there are still buyers out there who want to move into their property as soon as possible. On average, it takes 28 days to exchange contracts for a new home vs up to 121 days for an older property which means buyers could celebrate Christmas and New Years in their brand-new property.”
The agency warns that the current buyers’ market is unlikely to last as lending conditions are gradually improving and greater political clarity is expected following the Budget.
Briggs also stated “we anticipate a release of pent-up demand to drive renewed activity from early 2026, which will be a turning point for the sales market and make for a more competitive property search.”