Andy Street, the most powerful Conservative outside Westminster, has taken on the prime minister over the party’s stance on housebuilding, warning him that winning the next election depends on the government committing itself to more development.
Street, the West Midlands mayor, said nimby MPs must not be allowed to stand in the way of construction and urged Rishi Sunak to be less “dogmatic” about building on the green belt.
Last week Labour called for planning rules to be relaxed to help fix the housing crisis. Some Tory councillors and MPs blamed the problem for the party’s poor performance in the local elections.
The government had a policy of building 300,000 homes a year in England, enforced through local authority targets.
But Sunak watered down the
