Michael Gove appears to ditch government pledge to build 300k homes per year
Downing Street has sought to shrug off comments from the housing minister seeming to suggest the government had scrapped its home-building targets.
Michael Gove suggested the government is no longer committed to building 300,000 homes a year by the mid 2020s, tearing up a Conservative party manifesto pledge.
In an interview with Mishal Husain on the BBC’s Today programme, housing minister Gove said he did not want to be “tied” to an arbitrary number.
When quizzed on whether the government would meet its 2019 pledge, Gove said: “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,” he added.
Earlier in the interview, Gove said he did not want “to be tied to a Procrustean bed.”
“Arithmetic is important, but so is beauty, so is belonging, so is democracy,” the minister said when pressed on meeting targets.
“Arithmetic is important, but so is beauty, so is belonging, so is democracy,” the minister said when pressed on meeting targets.
Boris Johnson’s spokesperson later said on Wednesday that the target to build 300,000 homes a year by the middle of the decade was “central to our levelling up mission.”
They added: “And, as you heard the levelling up secretary say, those homes need to be good quality, they need to be well designed and come with the infrastructure that new development needs.”
The government was “certainly making progress towards that target,” the spokesperson said.
However, a former housing secretary had stated the manifesto pledge would be missed “by a country mile.”
Robert Jenrick told MPs: “It is a matter of the greatest importance to this country that we build more homes. Successive governments have failed to do this. There’s always an excuse.”