Labour's £21billion housing fund blasted after only 8% of pledged homes tracked by ministers

The Government is aiming to deliver 1.5 million new homes by July 2029

The Government has been urged to review its housing regulations after a report revealed that the £21billion housing fund is not set up to ensure balanced building across the country.

The Public Accounts Committee’s report detailed that they do not feel that the Department and Homes England is adopting a strategic approach to ensure a balanced range of locations for the National Housing Delivery Fund.

Ben Hopkinson, the head of housing and infrastructure at the Centre for Policy Studies, told GB News: “The revelations from the Public Accounts Committee are concerning.

“The Government and Homes England only keeping track of 8 per cent of the homes that it pledged to unlock with £10bn of taxpayer money points to serious challenges in their ability to oversee large grant programmes.

“At the same time, the Government has been making it more expensive to build new homes through new regulations, such as the Future Homes Standard.

“If the Government wants to unlock more homes, it needs to urgently remove regulations that make building harder and ensure that any grant money is tracked and used in areas with the worst housing shortages.”

The report from the PCS has outlined a number of concerns with the housing fund.

The Government is aiming to deliver 1.5 million new homes by July 2029. To achieve this target, 300,000 homes would need to be built each year; such levels have not been seen since the 1960s.

The NHDF was launched to help source land for this housing, doing so without a pipeline of projects, which PAC claims was due to a reactive and demand-led approach being taken.

This approach has led PAC to raise concerns that money will be allocated on a project-by-project basis, rather than being distributed evenly.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has reported that as of the end of December 2025, 57,671 homes had been delivered by legacy programmes.

However, there have been no parameters placed to showcase success for the scheme, as well as no clear goal for how many homes they expect will be built on land unlocked by the NHD, or when those homes will be built.

More than £20billion is being used with no clear and measurable success criteria against which to assess outcomes.

MHCLG cannot robustly assess the performance of the NHDF, the PCS has warned.

Clive Betts MP, Deputy Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, said: “Our nation’s housing crisis has a number of complex drivers, including the loss of social housing and a failure of supply keeping pace with demand.

“One of the more important pieces of the puzzle for the Government to solve will be opening up the supply of land which developers view currently as not attractive or profitable enough to build upon.

“We have all long been in desperate need of homes, and land on which to build them, so the many billions of pounds that Government has put behind this effort are to be welcomed.

“However, our Committee is focused on delivery, rather than the choice to allocate funds, which in this instance have been set aside without a considered pipeline of projects ready to go.

“Indeed, £21billion has been marked for housing delivery without any criteria to judge whether it has been successfully spent.

“We fear that at present, housing projects which advocate for themselves will benefit, while other areas in similar or even perhaps greater need may miss out, which could produce unequal outcomes in different areas of England.

“Such an important policy will require a strategic focus if it is to have any hope of success, and we hope the recommendations in our report help Government develop one.”

A spokesman for the Ministry of Housing told GB News: "We know Government support is essential to unlock land on which homes would otherwise not be built.

"This support has already unlocked tens of thousands of homes, but we know that larger sites can take time to come forward.

"That's why we've launched the £5billion National Housing Delivery Fund and the £16billion National Housing Bank, alongside planning reforms to speed up housebuilding and weather geopolitical pressures."