The government has already suggested that the ZEV mandate targets need to change (what a surprise – shame they were the last to realise 🤔) and there is a fast track consultation to recommend how to revise them. They haven’t yet woken up to the fact that the 2030/35 deadlines are completely unachievable, so that is a can kicked down the road for now.
Just as you can’t force people to buy cars that they don’t want by imposing penalties on manufacturers, you can’t force house-builders to build houses that there aren’t enough buyers for. There is no doubting that we need the houses (in fact we need far more than the target for both current U.K. residents and the additional migrants that will undoubtedly come to the country over the next 5 years) but how many of these people can afford to buy houses? Most potential first time buyers don’t stand a chance of affording property in major swathes of the country, existing homeowners with fixed term mortgages will see large payment hikes when their term ends, buy-to-let landlords are offloading properties rather than adding to their portfolios due to tax changes, and local authorities don’t have the money to buy them to add to their social housing stocks.
It’s all basic supply and demand, which this lot seem not to have even the most basic grasp of.