Growth forecast for 2025 slashed as Reeves promises at least 1.3m homes

Chancellor Rachel Reeves has delivered her long-awaited Spring Statement.

Here’s a summary of the measures and announcements:

• Independent Office for Budget Responsibility slashes growth forecast for 2025 from 2% (predicted last autumn) to 1% now; and OBR increases forecast for end-2025 inflation from 2.6% to 3.2%;

• Changes to planning framework will help build over 1.3m homes across the whole UK in the next five years, with Reeves saying this is in “touching distance” of Labour’s promised 1.5m homes (but Labour manifesto promise was for 1.5m homes in England alone); 

• Reeves expects inflation to fall to Bank of England’s 2% target by 2027;

• Increasing capital spending by average £2 billion a year compared to the autumn, to drive growth especially in defence;

• Plans to “increase the number of tax fraudsters charged each year by 20%” to take the total revenue raised from reducing tax evasion to £7.5 billion;

• Committed to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP from April 2027. Immediately there will be a further £2.2 billion defence spending uplift for 2025/2026;

• Overseas aid will be reduced to 0.3% of GDP in same period; 

• Apprenticeships for 60,000 new construction workers;

• A £2 billion increase to UK Export Finance quango’s lending capacity;

• Creation of a £3.25 billion Transformation Fund to fuel reforms to public services to make government ‘leaner’ and ‘more efficient’ and “significantly reduce the costs of running government” by 15%;

• Total saving from welfare reforms to be £3.4 billion; 

• Universal Credit standard allowance will increase from £92 per week in t2025/26 to £106 per week by 2029/30 while the Universal Credit health element will be “cut by 50% and then frozen for new claimants”.

Reeves has told MPs that she’s sticking to her so-called fiscal rules.

She says that according to the OBR forecast, the current budget would have been in deficit by £4.1 billion in 2029-30, having been in surplus by £9.9 billion in the autumn. The Chancellor says that due to her steps today, she has “restored in full our headroom against the “stability rule”.

Reeves says this means “moving from a deficit of £36.1 billion in 2025-26 and £13.4 billion in 2026-27, to a surplus of £6.0 billion in 2027-28, £7.1 billion in 2028-29 and £9.9 billion in 2029-30”. The country will therefore meet the stability rule “two years early”.

This article is taken from Landlord Today