Michael Gove: Unlikely to hit 300,000-homes-a-year target

Housing secretary Michael Gove has confirmed the government is unlikley to hit its target to build 300,000 new homes annually this year. On the Today Programme this morning, Gove said that he was no longer “tied” to hitting the statistical target.

He told Mishal Husain: “We’re going to do everything we can in order to ensure that more of the right homes are built in the right way in the right places – because I don’t want us to be tied to a Procrustean bed. I think it’s critically important that, even as we seek to improve housing supply, we also seek to build communities that people love and are proud of.”

He added that hitting the target was pointless if the homes built were of a poor standard.

“We’ll do everything we can but it’s no kind of success simply to hit a target if the homes that are built are shoddy, in the wrong place, don’t have the infrastructure required and are not contributing to beautiful communities.

“Ultimately, when you’re building a new dwelling, you’re not simply trying to hit a statistical target. I’m certainly not.

“It’s only one of a number of things that we need to do. We are not bound – I am not bound – by one criterion alone when it comes to development. Arithmetic is important, but so is beauty, so is belonging, so is democracy.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “The housing target is still in place.”

“We’re not dropping it but he doesn’t think that we’ll be hitting the target this year and obviously, we are setting out ways in which we’re going to be upping or heightening the quality of homes.

“We’re not bound to that one criteria alone, what we’re bound to building more affordable, more quality homes, and our 300,000 target is still in place.”

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