Fresh face Katie Lam, who was only elected as an MP for the first time in 2024, has been appointed as the Conservative’s Shadow Housing, Communities and Local Government Minister – her first ever shadow frontbench position. She replaces Sir James Cleverly, who has stood down from the post after a relatively unremarkable year in the role to pursue the Conservative candidacy for London Mayor. Katie will now face off against a returning Angela Rayner in the HCLG portfolio.
Having launched her career with six years at Goldman Sachs, Katie has also served short stints as a Special Advisor to Boris Johnson, as a PR consultant, and as Chief of Staff at an AI company, before being elected as MP for the Weald of Kent’s in July 2024.
Part of a new, younger wave of Conservative MPs being brought into senior positions by Kemi Badenoch, Katie has been tipped as a “rising star” and “potential future leader” of the Conservative party by The Guardian and The Times respectively. This is despite being at one point touted as a potential defector to Reform UK, following her support of now-Reform MP Robert Jenrick in the 2024 Conservative leadership elections.
Many of her public statements and social media posts have focused on immigration, with a much shorter record on housing, planning, development or local government. In fact, her social media post announcing her new appointment as Shadow HCLG Secretary, which ran just 134 words long, did not mention Green Belt, housing targets, or anything else directly related to planning – but found space to criticise political candidates “running campaigns designed to appeal to particular ethnic, religious, or racial groups”.
When she has commented on housing, she has criticised London’s poor record on housebuilding. In January 2026, she questioned Steve Reed, then the Housing Secretary, in the Commons regarding the capital’s “pitiful” housing starts numbers, suggesting that the South East’s housing crisis was “exported from London”, and that the region had already taken “more than its fair share” of new homes. In May 2025, she similarly questioned Angela Rayner as to why they had reduced housing targets in London, arguing that this was increasing pressure on house prices in rural Kent. It should be noted that she did not offer her own thoughts on any solutions for increasing housebuilding in the capital.
Whilst undeniably an increasingly prominent figure in the Conservative Party, a lack of experience or apparent interest in housing and development compared to issues such as immigration will raise significant questions as to why she was selected for this particular shadow cabinet position. We may see her focus significantly more on the “Communities” aspect of the portfolio, although as Burnham and Rayner push for a big increase in council housebuilding, it will be hard for her to remain quiet on this issue for long.
You can see her full statement on accepting the shadow cabinet position here.
