OBR housing forecast: planning reforms and pipeline timing for project teams
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on The Construction Index
30 Second Briefing
Reforms to the National Planning Policy Framework announced in December 2024 have yet to lift housebuilding, with the Office for Budget Responsibility’s March 2026 Economic and Fiscal Outlook showing net additions to the UK housing stock falling from around 260,000 a year in the early 2020s to a projected low of 220,000 in 2026-27. The OBR still expects planning changes to push net additions to just over 305,000 by 2030-31, compared with a current stock of more than 32 million dwellings. For contractors, developers and ground engineers, this points to a short-term pipeline dip before a potential late-decade ramp-up in housing sites and associated infrastructure.
Technical Brief
- OBR’s March 2026 Economic and Fiscal Outlook is issued alongside chancellor Rachel Reeves’ spring statement.
- March 2025 EFO projected NPPF reforms would add 170,000 dwellings over five years versus baseline.
- That 170,000 uplift was expected to deliver 1.3 million cumulative net additions between 2025-26 and 2029-30.
- OBR framed the 1.3 million as a 16% increase in net additions relative to previous trajectory.
- Even with the uplift, total stock impact was assessed as only a 0.5% rise by 2030.
- UK housing stock baseline used in the OBR analysis exceeds 32 million dwellings nationwide.
- OBR explicitly attributes weaker near-term output to “recent subdued housing starts” already in the pipeline.
Our Take
With the OBR projecting only a 0.5% uplift on a housing stock of over 32 million by 2030, the implied build rate is closer to replacement and retrofit than large-scale greenfield expansion, which tends to favour brownfield regeneration and densification projects in the United Kingdom.
Across the 139 Policy stories in our database, UK housing and planning pieces like this one often precede shifts in local authority infrastructure planning assumptions, so transport, utilities and ground investigation consultants may want to treat the 2025–30 OBR projections as a conservative baseline for workload forecasting.
The projected 1.3 million net additions over 2025–26 to 2029–30 suggest that even if Rachel Reeves’ planning reforms unlock more sites, capacity constraints in design, civils and materials supply chains are likely to remain binding, which could keep tender prices elevated for medium-sized contractors focused on residential-led projects.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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