Councils must meet house-building targets or lose planning powers, Government says

Sajid Javid warns local authorities he will be 'breathing down your necks'

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Councils that fail to build enough homes will lose their right to determine where new houses are placed, according to plans set to be revealed by Theresa May.

So-called “nimby” (“not in my back yard”) councils have been warned that the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government will be “breathing down [their] neck” to ensure home-building targets are met.

An overhaul of planning laws will see the creation of new rules to give councils targets for how many homes they should build each year.

This will take into account house prices, wages and the number of “key workers” like nurses, teachers and police officers in a given area.

Higher targets will be set for areas with higher “unaffordability ratios” and any council that fails to deliver on the target will be stripped of planning powers.

“We have a housing crisis in this country,” Communities Secretary Sajid Javid told The Sunday Times.

“We need a housing revolution. The new rules will no longer allow nimby councils that don’t really want to build the homes that their local community needs to fudge the numbers.”

He said that there were no sanctions or method of ensuring that councils were delivering at the moment, but that was “going to change”.

“We are going to be breathing down your neck day and night to make sure you are actually delivering on those numbers”, he warned councils.

The move comes after The Independent revealed that a flagship Government programme to deliver 200,000 discounted new homes to first-time buyers is yet to see a single one built.

The 2014 Starter Home initiative was described as being part of “a major push” to help people on the housing ladder and promised “innovative changes to the planning system” to “allow house builders to develop under-used or unviable brownfield land and free them from planning costs”.

Officials, however, were forced to admit that more than three years later that delivering any properties under the scheme remained an “ambition”.