“Build, baby, build!” – Who is our new Housing Secretary?

Following a week of press scrutiny, Angela Rayner resigned as the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government on 5th September.

She has been replaced by Steve Reed, Member of Parliament for Streatham and Croydon North since 2012 and Environment Secretary for the last 14 months.

Reed brings significant relevant experience to the HCLG brief. For 14 years a councillor in Lambeth, he was Leader of the Council for six years from 2006 to 2012. During that time he sat on the board overseeing the Vauxhall – Nine Elms – Battersea regeneration project during its early stages. In his capacity as Leader of Lambeth he also served as the Executive Board Member for Housing at London Councils, the collective body representing all 32 London Boroughs.

Previously, Reed served a year as Labour’s Shadow Minister for Local Government under Jeremy Corbyn, and was made Keir Starmer’s first Shadow Secretary of State for HCLG following the Labour leadership in 2020. 18 months in this role was followed by stints as Shadow Justice Secretary and then Shadow Environment Secretary: the brief he took into Government when Labour was elected last year.

During his time as Environment Secretary, Reed had already been somewhat involved with the Government’s ambitious housebuilding drive, writing a joint article with Angela Rayner in December 2024 that promised to put “nature at the heart of Labour’s building plans”. However, he may struggle to marry these past promises with recent reports that Chancellor Rachel Reeves is considering further weakening environmental regulations in a second Planning and Infrastructure Bill – one spearheaded by the Treasury rather than MHCLG.

One week into the job, Reed has so far adopted the confident attitude of his predecessor, telling officials and the press that his mantra was to “build, baby, build”, echoing Donald Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” motto deployed last year during the US elections. On Friday, Reed also held a roundtable with senior figures in the planning and housebuilding industry, and confirmed that the Government remains “absolutely committed” to the 1.5-million housing target. He said:

“We are doubling down on our plans to unleash one of the biggest eras of building in our country’s history and we are backing the builders all the way.

“My job is to get every barrier out of the way that is stopping that construction going ahead. I don’t want the developers dragging their feet. They don’t want to drag their feet – it’s their business.”

Reed brings great experience of the sector to the HCLG role, however the department has just lost a very high-profile member of the Government. Reed will have his work cut out to keep the Government focused on their housebuilding mission, at a time when Labour appears tossed and turned by the flow of events.