“Another day, another U-turn but this one is particularly serious in that in watering down the country’s likely annual residential construction output, thousands of would-be buyers and renters are going to have less choice of home,” said Crawford.
“The result will be even higher house prices as increasing demand from net positive immigration and an ageing population continues to outweigh supply."
James Forrester, managing director at Stripe Property Group, went as far as to call the move “astonishingly negligent”.
He went on: “House building has languished below the required 300,000 annual number since the 1950’s and that’s even with the focus and accountability of local authority facing targets.
“To remove those targets is to allow the UK’s requirement to dangle in the wind and we now have even less chance as a nation of providing adequate dwelling numbers.”
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities was approached for comment.
ruby.hinchliffe@ft.com
