Nominations for Starmers’ replacement open tomorrow (9th July). Andy Burnham looks likely to walk into Downing Street within the fortnight, possibly unopposed, after Wes Streeting stood aside to back him.

For most of the country, this is a political story. For housebuilding, it’s a delivery story. Those of us in the industry will know how Burnham has spent years telling anyone who’ll listen what he thinks is wrong with how Britain builds homes. Now, almost out of nowhere, he is about to be in a position to actually try it. This makes Burnham’s next step a very interesting one to watch.

Here’s what he’s said so far, and what it could mean for the sector:

  • The big pledge: council housing at post-war scale

Burnham’s launch speech in Manchester put a number on the table: the biggest council housebuilding programme since the 1950s. Britain has lost close to 1.5 million council homes since the 1980s, and roughly that many people are stuck on waiting lists. His argument is that planning reform on its own won’t fix that. You need the state building again, not just clearing the path for private developers to build.

That’s a genuinely different emphasis to the current government’s approach, which has leaned heavily on planning reform and grey belt release to hit the 1.5 million target. Analysts have already pointed out the obvious gap in Burnham’s pitch: he’s said what he wants to build, not who builds it, how it’s funded, or what makes delivery faster than it is now. The £39bn Social and Affordable Housing Programme is already committed. Whether that stretches to “post-war scale” is a fair question nobody’s answered yet.

For SME and mid-market housebuilders, a bigger state building programme isn’t automatically bad news. It depends entirely on whether councils build direct, use their own development arms, or partner with the private sector to deliver it. We will be keeping an eye on that upcoming detail closely.

  • Devolution and “No 10 North”

Burnham wants decision-making moved out of Westminster into a Manchester-based operation he’s calling No 10 North, covering the Midlands, the North, the South West and the East. He’s built his career on the argument that city regions should control their own housing and planning delivery, not wait for Whitehall.

If that extends to planning powers, it could mean more variation between regions in how quickly sites move through the system, and which authorities are easiest to work with. For a firm placing across the country, that’s worth tracking region by region rather than assuming national policy shifts land evenly.

  • Land value tax and stamp duty

Burnham has been consistent for years on this one. He’s called council tax “highly regressive,” pointed out that bills are still based on 1991 valuations, and backed replacing council tax and potentially stamp duty with a land value tax. He’s previously described land taxation as a way to stop landowners sitting on sites and hoarding value.

If that ever became policy, it would matter more to land and planning teams than almost anything else on this list. A land value tax changes the maths on holding undeveloped sites. It’s the kind of reform that reshapes who’s active in the land market, not just how much they pay. It’s also, by his own admission, politically contentious and years from being detailed policy. Worth knowing about but not worth panicking about yet.

  • Infrastructure-led development

One thing that’s less contested: Burnham genuinely believes in tying housing to infrastructure investment. Victoria North and Mayfield in Manchester are the examples he points to, and he’s pledged to bring back the Manchester leg of HS2. The logic is that infrastructure unlocks viability on sites that wouldn’t otherwise work, particularly in the regions rather than London and the South East.

So what do these concepts mean for hiring?

Regardless of whose in Downing Street, the skills gap in planning, land and technical roles doesn’t disappear. If anything, a bigger council housebuilding push and a more devolved planning system both increase demand for people who know how to get sites through committee and get schemes financed. Housing associations and local authority development arms may find themselves competing harder for talent they’ve historically not needed to fight for.

When it comes to watching how these changes will impact day-to-day hiring, our own client base gives us a decent vantage point. By working with national PLC housebuilders to SMEs and privately-backed firms up and down the UK, we can see where spikes in regional hiring enquiries appear way before it shows up in any official statistics. At the moment, our data, as outlined in our 2026 People & Pay report, has been centred away from London but with an equal spread of roles across England. Whether we will see this tipping into a more favoured Northern divide remains to be seen.

It is also important to state that nothing here is confirmed policy. Some of it might not survive contact with the Treasury. But the direction of travel is clearer than it’s been in a while, and it’s different enough from the current approach that it’s worth having a view before it lands rather than after.

As always, we will share our take on how changes at the top impact the hiring line.