Cleverly warns housing crisis will become ‘increasingly important’ issue as he takes shadow cabinet role

Mr Cleverly, who also served as foreign secretary and education secretary in the last government, has replaced Kevin Hollinrake in the shadow role for housing, communities and local government. 

Mr Hollinrake has been appointed the party’s chair by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader.

In his interview with Sky, Mr Cleverly also gave his views on the the reason homebuilding targets had not been met for many years, including under the last Conservative administration. 

“I think we’ve allowed the process to become incredibly expensive and bureaucratic,” he said.

“We’ve allowed an excessive consolidation of the home building market… and smaller house builders have been squeezed out of the sector.

“And I think the other big challenge is that we haven’t really made the case, the beneficial case, for communities to have a modest amount of new housing.”

In a post on X last October, Mr Cleverly said he wanted planning policy to change to make it easier for people to build homes at higher densities “to build up, rather than out”.

He added: “That way we protect the green belt, we protect our countryside and we let young people get a foot on the housing ladder,” he said.

He said building more homes did not have to mean “tarmacking over the green belt”.

The issue of building on the green belt remains politically charged as Labour has created a classification known as the ‘grey belt’, which will allow development on some “poor-quality” green belt land. 

Last month Ms Badenoch said that if her party regained power, it would create a special Armed Forces housing association to “make sure we have the homes our service people need”.

In other changes in the reshuffle, Stuart Andrew has moved from shadow culture secretary to shadow health secretary.

Mr Andrew, who briefly served as housing minister in the last government, has replaced Ed Argar, who has stepped down due to a “health scare”. 

Nigel Huddleston, who was the party’s co-chair, has replaced Mr Andrew as shadow culture secretary.

Among bookmakers, the Conservatives are currently third favourites to get the most number of seats at the next general election behind Labour and Reform, with odds of 5/1.