The Government’s announcement at the weekend that it will stop London Mayor Sadiq Khan and other local authorities from gold-plating national Net Zero rules shows the Housing Secretary, Steve Reed’s determination to get more homes built. But no one seriously thinks Labour is currently on track for its manifesto promise of 1.5 million new homes this Parliament. To get closer, it simply must build more in the nation’s cities, Labour’s home ground, where imposing more homes will cost it more votes than building in rural areas. Nonetheless, it has some other options left.

When Labour came to power last year, there was much hope that the new government could tackle Britain’s housing shortage. The December 2024 “grey belt” reforms to allow more homes in the green belt were originally billed as covering quarries and car parks. But the final version goes much further. Where local authorities are not meeting targets, it allows big urban extensions onto previously green fields. Private planners are working overtime to get applications through and, where local authorities refuse, the developers are often beating them on appeal. The heralded new policy to encourage homes within walking distance of train stations is due to be published soon, and it all suggests that Labour is acting with more urgency than the Tories were.

But the Government has nearly run out of ways to get more homes built in the countryside. And some voters in parts of the North with no real housing shortage are starting to get upset about new homes imposed on them by Whitehall to meet an arbitrary national target. In reality, the problem is that London and a few other places have been exporting their housing shortages for decades. So London and other towns and cities are the obvious places for building more homes.

London currently produces one-twentieth of the homes it needs to keep pace with population increases. Labour has made a start by encouraging Khan to fix various London rules, reducing the number of homes built. Examples include the requirement for every flat to have windows on two sides, which cuts homes per site by some 20%, and requirements for absurd amounts of cycle parking — often a whole floor of a building, which remains unused. But that will only get London back toward the homebuilding levels of the last decades, which were still hopelessly inadequate.

What else can Labour do? Some ways to deliver new homes are actually popular. California delivers around one-fifth of new homes through granny flats and granny cottages. And we have room: the typical plot for those new units is smaller than the average plot size in outer London.

Another option for building more homes in towns and cities is renewing existing estates in partnership with tenants, funding better homes for them by selling new homes for first-time buyers and others. London tenants often vote for this by majorities of over 80%, and most surrounding residents like the improvement in their area.

The Government has plenty of additional options to get more homes built, and removing the authority of mayors and local authorities to prioritise extreme Net Zero commitments over building is a good start. But that alone won’t be enough — it is fast running out of time to take action.