'Get Britain building again': New UK finance chief restores housing targets

LONDON — Britain's new finance chief on Monday outlined a spate of measures to revitalize the U.K.'s languishing economic growth and address national housing shortages.

"I have repeatedly warned that whoever won the general election would inherit the worst set of circumstances since the Second World War. What I have seen in past 72 hours has only confirmed that," newly minted Finance Minister Rachel Reeves said in her first major speech in the post on Monday, adding that "nowhere is decisive reform needed more urgently than in the case of our planning system."

A former Bank of England economist, Reeves was appointed as Britain's first female chancellor of the exchequer — equivalent to a finance minister — on Friday, when newly invested Prime Minister Keir Starmer named his first Cabinet. Ahead of her first speech, she championed economic growth as both a party priority and the "national mission." She is not expected to deliver her first state budget until the fall and on Monday said she will reveal the explicit timeline "in due course."

Reeves added that she has instructed Treasury officials to provide an assessment on the state of British spending inherited from the previous Conservative administration, which she aims to present to Parliament before summer recess.

Housing and planning were center stage in Reeves' Monday speech:

"First, we will reform the national planning policy framework, consulting on a new growth-focused approach to the planning system before the end of the month. Including restoring mandatory housing targets. And as of today we are ending the absurd ban on new onshore wind [farms] in England," she said.

"We are going to get Britain building again. We are going to get Britain's economy growing again. And