Britain's housing shortfall
Labour promised England 1.5m new homes this parliament. Delivery is running 275 homes a day behind the pace required. This page keeps the score, live, from official data.
LONDON
*Straight-line requirement of 821.5 homes a day from July 9th 2024 to the automatic dissolution of parliament on July 9th 2029
Sources: MHCLG, housing supply indicators, June 19th 2026; Housing Clock
Plan for Change milestone for this parliament
MHCLG estimate to June 14th, plus 547 a day since
To reach 1.5m by July 2029
--:--:-- to dissolution
About 361,000 a year; the best since 1991 is 248,590
199,500 in 2025-26; one every 2m 38s
The pledge was the centrepiece of Labour's 2024 campaign: 1.5m new homes in England within the parliament, later hardened into a Plan for Change milestone. The arithmetic is unforgiving. Spread across the 1,826 days from the day parliament first met in July 2024 to its automatic dissolution in July 2029, it requires 821 net additions a day, weekends and Christmas included. England's best year in the modern record, 2019-20, averaged 679. The government's own standard method, published with the December 2024 planning reforms, puts England's annual need at 370,408 homes, so even the pledge falls short of what ministers themselves say is required.
Delivery is running at 547. On the government's own tracker, 392,400 homes had been added by June 14th 2026, about 187,600 short of a straight-line path. Each week that passes at the current pace adds roughly 1,900 to the arrears.
Momentum matters
The direction of travel is wrong as well. Net additions have fallen for three years running, to an estimated 199,500 in 2025-26. New-build completions in the year to March were the lowest since 2015-16. New-build starts have recovered sharply from their trough in mid-2024, up by 43% to 130,170 in the year to March 2026, which ministers reasonably cite as a pipeline rebuilding. Two things temper it. Starts remain about a 14% below their end-2023 level, and they are running below completions, so the pipeline is being drawn down rather than filled. A start rate of 130,000 a year cannot produce the 300,000 completions a year the pledge implies, however favourably it converts. Project the current pace forward and the parliament ends near 1m homes, half a million short. Independent forecasters are gloomier still: Savills expects an average of 167,500 a year to 2030; Bloomberg Intelligence reckons the target will be missed by at least 40%.
The case for the defence
The government's answer is reform: a rewritten National Planning Policy Framework, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, and a programme of new towns. Ministers argue delivery was always going to be back-loaded, and they can point to new-build starts, which have risen for five consecutive quarters. The difficulty is arithmetic rather than intent. A home completed before July 2029 must in most cases already hold planning permission, and on larger sites the lag from consent to completion runs to several years, so reform legislated in 2025 and 2026 largely lands in the next parliament. The pipeline argues the same way. The number of residential planning permissions granted in England fell again in 2025-26, to 28,126, the lowest in the published series and down 44% since 2016-17. Starts can rise for a time by drawing down the bank of unbuilt consents, which is what appears to be happening, but completions after 2027 depend on permissions granted now. Back-loading also has to clear a higher bar the longer it is deferred: to reach 1.5m from here on a steadily rising path, the final year alone would have to deliver roughly 478,000 homes, nearly double the best England has ever managed.
Ministers prefer to cite the Office for Budget Responsibility. Its March 2026 forecast does project a recovery, from a trough of 219,000 net additions across the United Kingdom in 2026-27 to 301,000 by 2029-30, so it is a back-loaded forecast of precisely the kind the defence requires. The figure usually quoted, though, covers the whole United Kingdom and runs to March 2030, eight months beyond this parliament. Restate it as the pledge was made, England and within the parliament, and the OBR's own numbers imply about 1,087,000 homes, roughly 413,000 short. The forecast most often used to defend the target does not reach it. The clock above keeps the score.
*Estimated from Energy Performance Certificate lodgements, net of demolitions; dots mark official MHCLG estimates, each taken from the release that first published it
Sources: MHCLG; Housing Clock
Projection holds the 2025-26 pace of 547 homes a day flat to dissolution; parliament ends with about 1,005,000 delivered, 495,000 short
Sources: MHCLG; Savills; Bloomberg Intelligence; Housing Clock projection
Two things on this page could reasonably be challenged: the pace of delivery, and the straight line it is measured against. The scenarios below test both, and each is deliberately weighted in the government's favour. One of them is the government's own preferred forecast.
The second is the one that needs explaining. Delivery this parliament is estimated from Energy Performance Certificates, because the definitive count takes eighteen months to compile. Those estimates have been revised upwards. In September 2025 the estimate for 2024-25 stood at 196,500 homes; when the final count arrived that November it was 208,600, some 6% higher. If today's figures are understated in exactly the same way, delivery is running better than the counter shows. That scenario tests what happens if they are. The uplift is applied only to the estimated part of delivery: the stretch of this parliament already covered by final 2024-25 outturn data is held unchanged.
| Scenario | Delivered by 2029 | Short of 1.5m |
|---|---|---|
| Current pace held to dissolution | 1,005,000 | 495,000 |
| Delivery proves 6% higher than estimated, as in 2024-25 | 1,056,000 | 444,000 |
| England matches its best year on record and holds it to 2029 | 1,150,000 | 350,000 |
| The OBR's own forecast, restated for England and this parliament | 1,087,000 | 413,000 |
| What the pledge actually requires | 1,500,000 | 367,000 a year, 48% above the record |
The pledge is missed under every scenario, including one in which England immediately matches its best year on record and sustains it to dissolution, and including the Office for Budget Responsibility's own March 2026 projection. The OBR forecasts net additions for the United Kingdom by financial year; restating that for England applies the England share of UK net additions across the four most recent outturn years, 86.9%, and apportions the part-years at each end of the parliament. The straight-line trajectory used elsewhere on this page changes how far behind delivery is today. It does not change whether the target is reached, and the pace now required is simply the homes still to build divided by the days still available, which needs no view about the shape of delivery at all
Sources: MHCLG; Housing Clock calculation
Sources: MHCLG, Live Table 118, annual net additional dwellings and indicators of new supply; Housing Clock calculation
Written to be checked. Every figure traces to a public source.
The Housing Clock is deliberately simple: one promise, one official measure of delivery, one straight line between them. This section sets out every assumption so the arithmetic can be reproduced from the sources below in a few minutes. Every figure has been checked against the published source data, and the estimate between releases is checked against weekly EPC lodgements.
The government's target is 1.5m new homes in England over the course of this parliament, restated in December 2024 as a Plan for Change milestone. The parliament first met on July 9th 2024, the date MHCLG itself uses as the starting line for its progress estimates. Under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022, a parliament not dissolved earlier dissolves automatically five years after it first met, so the clock runs to midnight at the start of July 9th 2029: 1,826 days in total.
If an election were instead held on the last possible polling day, August 15th 2029, the window would stretch by 37 days and the required daily rate would ease by about 2%. The clock takes the stricter, cleaner reading: a parliament's promise ends when the parliament does.
The unit of account is the net additional dwelling, the government's primary measure of housing supply. It counts new-build completions, conversions and changes of use, and subtracts demolitions. It is published once a year, each November, for the financial year ending the previous March. 2024-25 closed at 208,600, a third consecutive annual fall.
Because the annual measure lags badly, MHCLG publishes a quarterly estimate of delivery within this parliament, built from Energy Performance Certificate lodgements for new dwellings, which track gross supply closely, less a small deduction for demolitions based on a five-year rolling average. The latest estimate, published on June 19th 2026, puts delivery at 392,400 homes between July 9th 2024 and June 14th 2026. That figure is the clock's anchor. It is rounded to the nearest hundred and subject to revision, as all early estimates are.
Between official releases the clock moves the anchor forward at the most recent full-year pace: MHCLG's estimate of 199,500 net additions in 2025-26, which is 546.6 homes a day, one every 2 minutes 38 seconds. A full-year rate is used rather than the latest quarter to avoid seasonal distortion. The live figure is therefore an estimate, not a measurement, and it is re-anchored the day each new MHCLG release appears.
The required trajectory runs in a straight line from zero on July 9th 2024 to 1,500,000 on July 9th 2029: 821.5 homes a day. The headline is the required trajectory to date minus estimated delivery to date. At the current pace the gap widens by 274.9 homes a day, one every 5 minutes 14 seconds.
Projecting the current pace flat to dissolution gives roughly 1,005,000 homes this parliament, about 495,000 short. That sits inside the independent range rather than at its pessimistic end. Savills forecasts an average of 167,500 completions a year to March 2030. Bloomberg Intelligence expects the target to be missed by at least 40%. The Office for Budget Responsibility's March 2026 forecast, restated for England and for this parliament, implies about 1,087,000, as set out in the scenario table above.
Larger figures are sometimes quoted from OBR forecasts in the target's defence. They cover the whole United Kingdom and run to March 2030, beyond the life of this parliament, so they answer a different question. The OBR's own projection of net additions across the United Kingdom over the five years to 2029-30 is 1.29m.
The full series, every constant and the derived figures are published as a spreadsheet so the arithmetic can be checked without retyping anything: housing-clock-data.csv.
Next scheduled re-anchor: MHCLG indicators of new supply, April to June 2026, expected September 2026. The net additional dwellings outturn for 2025-26 follows in November 2026.
Errors found after publication are corrected here, dated, rather than quietly amended.
Housing is devolved, so the target and every figure on this page are England only. EPC-based estimates are a close proxy for supply, not a census of it, and all parliament-to-date figures are rounded to the nearest hundred. They are also revised, and so far in one direction. The estimate for 2024-25 was published at 199,300, then revised to 196,500 across successive quarterly releases; the outturn came in at 208,600, some 6% above the lower estimate. If that pattern repeats, the 2025-26 estimate of 199,500 will be revised up when outturn data arrives in November 2026, and the shortfall shown here will narrow accordingly. This page uses the published estimate rather than an adjusted one, because the published figure is the one anyone can check. The Housing Clock is independent and non-partisan. It holds no view on who should build the homes, only that a promise counted in public should be measured in public. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
Short answers. The methodology above has the detail.
What is Labour's housing target?
1.5 million new homes in England over the course of this parliament, a pledge from the July 2024 general election that became a formal Plan for Change milestone in December 2024. It averages 300,000 homes a year, a level England has never reached in the modern statistical record.
How big is Britain's housing shortfall right now?
Against a straight-line path to 1.5 million, England was an estimated 187,600 homes behind schedule at the last official data point, June 14th 2026, and the gap grows by roughly 275 homes a day at the current pace. The live counter at the top of this page carries that forward second by second.
Is the government on track to build 1.5 million homes?
No independent analyst currently thinks so. On the current pace this parliament delivers around 1,005,000 homes. New-build starts have risen 43% from their mid-2024 trough, which is the strongest argument that delivery accelerates from here, but at 130,170 a year they remain a 14% below end-2023 and below the current rate of completions. Savills, Bloomberg Intelligence and planning application data all point to a substantial miss, and Full Fact's government tracker rates the pledge as appearing off track.
How is the Housing Clock calculated?
Delivery comes from MHCLG's own estimate of net additional dwellings this parliament, 392,400 to June 14th 2026, moved forward at the 2025-26 pace of 547 homes a day. The requirement is a straight line from zero to 1.5 million across the 1,826 days of the parliament. The headline is the difference between the two.
Why England rather than the whole of Britain?
Housing policy is devolved. The 1.5 million target applies to England, and the official statistics that measure it are England only, so the clock is too. Britain's wider shortfall is larger than the England figures shown here.
When does the clock stop?
At midnight at the start of July 9th 2029, when this parliament dissolves automatically under the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 if an election has not been called sooner. An earlier election stops the clock early, with the target unmet unless delivery has reached 1.5 million.