Government must commit to building 1.5m new homes by 2020, says think-tank

The report (60-page/807KB PDF) examined the barriers to home ownership and found that property taxation in the UK is higher than all other developed countries. It said that planning and banking changes would be the "real solution" to issues of inequality and volatility that land and property tax try to deal with.

It said that if politicians want to "fix the real underlying problems" with the UK housing market, they need to "get to grips with the real issues". "Rising land and house prices are related to a fundamentally broken planning system that pushes up the value of land with planning permission ever higher. This is clear from the evidence of the past 30 years. If we do not build enough homes, house prices and rents will rise," the report said.

It said politicians would need to commit to build 300,000 homes per year, a figure it said would "not be unreasonable just to keep up with need". Such a commitment would require "major planning reform".

“Policymakers should ignore calls for a new round of property taxes, and instead commit to spreading the benefits of homeownership and stabilising the UK economy by building at least 1.5m new homes over the course of the next parliament," said the think tank's head of housing Alex Morton. "This means serious reform of the planning system and creating new ways to deliver housing,” he added.