Former Chancellor George Osborne has poured cold water on the oft-repeated house building claim by Ministers that the UK will soon be constructing 300,000 new homes a year.

The desire to build more homes has been stated by many Conservative politicians including Osborne when he was Chancellor in response to criticisms that homes are unaffordable for many first and second-time buyers.

During an interview with Naga Munchetty (pictured) at Friday’s The Negotiator Conference at Grosvenor House in London, Osborne agreed that to achieve 300,000 new homes, the Government would have to build at least 100,000 ‘council houses’ every year.

“It has been clear for many years that house builders are unable to build more than 200,000 homes a year, so the rest will have to be initiated by government,” he said.

Last year some 140,000 new homes were built by developers, 21,000 by housing associations and 1,400 by local councils, approximately the same level as just before the financial crash of 2008.

During a wide-ranging interview the former Chancellor pointed out that Britain’s ‘NYMBY’ local groups in the Home Counties lobbying their MPs meant freeing up planning to build more homes might sound good during conference speeches but is very unlikely to happen.

Landlord taxation

Osborne was tackled on several other key property industry topics during the interview including his introduction of a 3% additional stamp duty on buy-to-lets and Section 24 changes to landlord taxation, both of which he defended.

“At the time we wanted to see a more level playing field in the sales market between first time buyers and landlords, and those measures were designed to do that,” he said.

But Osborne told Munchetty that he thought the pendulum has swung away from landlords too much – suggesting given Osborne has Hunt’s ear at the moment – some more pro-landlord policies may be in the pipeline.