Labour ‘needs 300 new builders a day’ to hit home target – but numbers are falling

Andy Burnham inherits a major challenge with housebuilding targets (Picture: Temilade Adelaja – WPA Pool/Getty Images) Andy Burnham’s government needs 300 people to join the construction workforce each day to reach its housebuilding target, new research has found – but instead, it’s losing 200 a day. Labour set out its ambition to build 1.5 million new homes in England ‘over the next parliament’ in its 2024 manifesto. However, that target is looking increasingly hard to reach, with just 143,110 houses built last year – almost 10,000 fewer than the previous year, and the lowest annual total since 2015/16. And now, researchers at Land Value Calculator (LVC) have found that hundreds of thousands more workers will be needed in the construction sector if the government is to have any hope of su