New figures from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) released alongside chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Autumn Budget predict that new housing completions will remain subdued until 2029-30.

In its latest Economic and fiscal outlook, the OBR said net additions to UK housing stock are expected to drop from an average of 260,000 a year in the early 2020s to a low of 215,000 in 2026-27 as the recent slowdown in development continues.

The OBR said it then expects net additions to rise sharply to an average of around 305,000 in 2029-30 as a direct result of the government’s planning reforms.

This should bring cumulative net additions to UK housing stock between 2024-25 and 2029-30 to 1.49m homes, just shy of government’s 1.5m target.

The OBR also claimed that nothing in the policy measures in the Budget announcement has a “sufficiently material impact to justify adjusting our post-measures potential output forecast”.

The Ministry of Housing revealed yesterday (25 November) that the number of new homes developed in England fell 4% year-on-year from 198,680 in 2023-24 to 190,600 in 2024-25.

During the Budget announcement Reeves also confirmed reports that owners of properties worth more than £2m in England will face a £2,500 annual charge from April 2028. This rises to £7,500 for properties worth more than £5m.

Alongside the ‘mansion tax’, Reeves unveiled a three-year £48m investment to boost capacity in the planning system.

This includes additional investment to recruit an extra 350 planners in England by expanding the Pathways to Planning Graduate Scheme and creating a new Planning Careers Hub to retain and retrain mid-career professionals.

John Gregory, partner and planning lawyer at law firm, Weightmans, said the boost for 350 new planners “demonstrates [the government] understands the scale of the problem,” but warned that “funding recruitment is only half the battle”.

“it’s encouraging to see the government also recognise the need for stronger retention strategies through the creation of a new Planning Careers Hub,” Gregory said.

“However, without a clear strategy to incentivise talent to stay in public sector roles, we risk creating an expensive training programme that ultimately benefits the private sector consultancies that we often see planners, understandably, leaving for.”

Meanwhile, from April 2027, government will introduce a 2% in increase to the basic, higher and additional rates of property income tax, increasing them to 22%, 42% and 47% respectively, which is estimated to generate an average of £500m a year from 2028-29.

Jason Tebb, president of property portal OnTheMarkert, said: “The additional tax on rental income is disastrous for landlords.

“After a decade of being squeezed by mortgage interest relief cuts, wear-and-tear allowance removal, SDLT surcharges, fiscal drag, and endless red tape, this move further erodes net yields, especially for highly leveraged landlords. This reform will simply see more and more landlords removing themselves from the PRS sector for a further squeeze on rental supply.

Craig Hughes, partner and head of private client services at Menzies LLP, added: “Although this measure is expected to generate an additional £0.5bn, it risks further distorting the property market and represents yet another setback for landlords and the wider rental sector.

“It is important to recognise that the rental market provides essential housing for many working individuals who cannot yet afford to buy a home. Repeatedly targeting landlords through tax adjustments may encourage them to exit the market, reducing the supply of rental properties and, in turn, driving up rents for tenants.”