No 10 has quashed suggestions it plans to backtrack on housebuilding commitments made ahead of the 2019 election.

Earlier today levelling up and housing secretary Michael Gove has seemingly hinted that the government plans to ditch housebuilding figures pledge in the 2019 manifesto.

In their manifesto published ahead of the last general election the Conservatives vowed to construct 300,000 new homes per year by 2025.

Quizzed over whether the target had been scrapped, the prime minister’s official spokesman clarified: “No. Our target to deliver 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s is central to our levelling up mission.

“But as you’ll have heard the Levelling Up Secretary say, those homes need to be good quality, they need to be well-designed and come with the infrastructure that new development needs,” they went on.

Gove explained in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Arithmetic is important but so is beauty, so is belonging, so is democracy and so is making sure that we are building communities.

“So yes, we definitely need more homes and we all know the reasons why but we also need homes that people can be proud of.”

“We are going to do everything we can in order to ensure that more of the right homes are built in the right way, in the right places.”
When quizzed over whether to government would hit its manifesto targets, he went on: “We are going to do everything we can but it is no kind of success simply to hit a target if the homes that are built are shoddy, in the wrong place, don’t have the infrastructure required and are not contributing to beautiful communities.”

In February Legal & General (L&G) and the British Property Federation (BPF) said that with 1.2 million households on waiting lists in England, an estimated 145,000 affordable homes are needed each year to meet demand, 95,000 more than recent annual delivery.