20-04-2025
Penny Mordaunt leads ‘Yimby' demands to build more homes
Penny Mordaunt is leading 'Yimby' demands for the Conservative Party to commit to building more homes.
In her first major intervention since losing her seat at last year's general election, Ms Mordaunt urged Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, to 'get policy right' to solve the housing crisis.
The former Commons leader will speak next month at the launch of the Conservative Yimby Initiative – a new pressure group set up by Sir Simon Clarke, a former housing secretary.
The Yimby (Yes In My Back Yard) movement first originated in California and calls for more house-building while opposing density limits. Sir Keir Starmer has declared that Labour 'is a Yimby party'.
Mrs Badenoch has called for more homes to be built, but insisted this must happen 'in the right places', and said supply cannot keep up with current levels of immigration.
Speaking to The Telegraph, Mrs Mordaunt said: 'How do you finance the regeneration of the dilapidated eyesore that is holding your high street back when the owner can't afford to and no developer wants to?
'What is the point of great, affordable, shared accommodation for young working people if they are charged five times what they should be in council tax? What can be done to make a desirable development happen when it doesn't deliver a viable return for the developer?'
'Beautiful, ambitious vision'
Mrs Mordaunt said there was 'more than one thing that stifles development', adding: 'It is wider than just planning, and it is different in different places.
'Get policy right and not only will you resolve the shortage of good homes but you'll also regenerate high streets, increase disposable income, preserve family housing stock and enable great design. Above all, this is about people having a shared, beautiful, ambitious vision for their community.'
Sir Simon, the director of Onward, a the centre-Right think tank, founded the Conservative Yimby Initiative after a collapse in the Tory vote among younger people at the last election.
The age at which voters are more likely to become a Tory instead of voting Labour is now 63, while the average age of a first-time buyer hit 36 last year. This is four years higher than at the turn of the century, with one in five buyers now aged 40 or over.
Risk of political extinction
In a warning to Mrs Badenoch, Sir Simon said the Conservatives risked political extinction unless they committed to a more liberalised housing policy.
'Britain's failure to build the homes we need is punishing young people, and leaving even young professionals living in substandard accommodation which costs the Earth,' he said.
'This is not merely an exercise in policymaking for the Conservatives but a battle for survival and relevance. Almost nobody under 40 voted for us in 2024, and our party will die unless we take a clear lead on home-building again.
'For all Conservatives, it should be utterly unacceptable that the key determinant of whether you can ever hope to own a home in large parts of the UK – especially London and the South East – is whether you have access to the Bank of Mum and Dad.
'That is the opposite of a society based around merit, opportunity and hard work that is the best reason to vote for us.'
Last year, Mrs Badenoch predicted that Angela Rayner, the Housing Secretary, would miss her target of building 1.5 million homes in the current Parliament.
She said the Government had introduced too much red tape to fulfil Ms Rayner's objective and accused Labour of 'punishing' areas where it believed it did not have support by imposing higher housing targets.
