The Prosper UK Housing Commission, a group of industry experts chaired by former Housing Minister and Downing Street Chief of Staff Gavin Barwell, has published Solving the Housing Crisis: A Plan to Make Homes More Affordable in Every Postcode.
Its report finds housebuilding held back on two fronts, and that both have to be tackled together.
Weak consumer confidence means builders cannot sell the homes they are already building. And with costs rising while prices stay flat, many schemes with planning permission are no longer viable.
At the party conferences, the Government announced Your First Home, a shared equity scheme for first-time buyers of new homes, which addresses demand, and the Conservatives pledged to reform Section 106, which addresses viability.
The report goes further than either party, setting out a package that tackles demand and viability together and adds measures to increase supply.
Gavin Barwell, chair of the Prosper UK Housing Commission, said: “I’m pleased that even before the report is published the Government has adopted one of our recommendations and the Conservatives have said they would implement another, but our recommendations are not ‘Pick N Mix’. Boosting demand without increasing supply will help a few people at the expense of everyone else, and tackling viability without tackling demand will make little difference. That is the view of the diverse group of industry experts who produced this report.”
Half the £76,000 rise in the cost of building a new home since 2020 comes from regulation, policy and tax. In the year to September 2025, planning permission was granted for 209,781 homes in England, the lowest since 2013. At the end of 2025, a record 176,130 children in England were living in temporary accommodation.
The Commission’s recommendations:
- Viability: Freeze new regulatory burdens for at least three years; introduce a two-part test for obligations on new housing; limit Section 106 to what a development itself needs.
- Demand: A temporary, targeted shared equity scheme for first-time buyers of new, energy-efficient homes, capped at around a fifth of sales per site and funded by an industry access fee.
- Supply: A National Planning Service for major applications, a national Green Belt review that protects land preventing sprawl and settlements merging, and higher-density development as standard.
- Renting: Cut stamp duty on Build to Rent developments, standardise their Section 106 agreements, rule out rent controls in law and establish a Public Build to Rent programme using public land to deliver more social rent homes.
Prosper UK was set up to get the UK growing again and to be honest with voters about the difficult choices that takes. The report argues that building the homes the country needs is central to unlocking economic growth, and that people buying new homes should not have to pay for problems that belong to everyone.
Gavin Barwell added: “Despite its welcome reforms of the planning system and funding for affordable housing, the Government is falling far short of its ambition to build 1.5 million homes in five years, and the latest figures, particularly in London, are little short of catastrophic. The victims are all around us. A few are sleeping rough, but most are hidden, stuck in temporary accommodation or unable to buy a home as their parents did.
Our housing crisis has been building for nearly 50 years and there is no silver bullet. Some of what we recommend won’t be popular, but unless we attack the problem from every angle it will only get worse.”
Lucian Cook, Commission member and Director of Residential Research at Savills, speaking in a personal capacity, said: “There is no quick fix for the UK housing market, but there is still plenty that can be done to address the issues. A bold holistic view is needed more than ever, if we are to look to deliver more homes throughout the economic and political cycles and make more efficient use of the homes we already have.”
Richard Cook, Commission member and Chief Development Officer at Clarion Housing Group, speaking in a personal capacity, said: “There is no silver bullet to fix the housing crisis. It needs all ideas and policies to be considered, and the work we have done with Prosper UK provides more solutions that, if implemented, will make a significant difference in meeting the challenge.”
Jackie Sadek, a member of the Commission and author of Broken Homes - Britain’s Housing Crisis: Facts, Factoids and Fixes, speaking in a personal capacity, said: “The permacrisis in housing in our country is grossly hobbling our economy and selling our young people short. The social and fiscal costs are immense. We need to give this urgent attention, not speeches and slogans. The Commission has produced a systemic, long-term, workable plan to increase supply and make housing more affordable in every postcode.”
