Henry Boot sees 'significant opportunity' to build thousands of homes more quickly after Labour's planning reforms

In a statement to the London Stock Exchange as the company published its results for the first half of the year, Mr Roberts said there was a particular opportunity for its subsidiary businesses Hallam Land and Stonebridge Homes.

Its Hallam Land arm has helped create 52,000 new homes since 1990 but Henry Boot says it has the potential to facilitate more than 100,000 as it has one of the largest land portfolios in the country.

Mr Roberts said: “With proposed changes to the National Planning Policy Framework suggested to be implemented by the end of the year, this will represent over the life of this Parliament a significant opportunity for our business to speed up securing planning consents in our large land bank and development pipeline.

"In particular, we have already identified circa 8,500 plots in Hallam Land's land bank where we expect to expedite planning applications.

"We also believe it will help with our plans to grow Stonebridge Homes where planning has been a consistent, frustrating drag on growth.”

Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in July that the national planning policy framework will be reformed.

The policy will include restoring mandatory housebuilding targets for local authorities as part of the drive to build 1.5 million homes over five years, which is expected to help builders.

Labour also intends to drop Conservative changes to the NPPF requiring new homes to be “beautiful”, arguing it is subjective, difficult to define and leads to inconsistent decision-making on applications.

In its results for the six months to June 30, Henry Boot said improving market sentiment saw it complete and exchange on £150.8m worth of land and property sales – up from £129.3m at the same point last year.

Mr Roberts said: "During the first half of the year we have started to see an improvement in our markets and this together with our focus on prime land and development, plus premium homes has helped us to achieve relatively strong property sales.

"The lower forward sales with which we started the year has affected our first half financial performance and as flagged at the time of our 2023 results, we expect 2024 to be heavily weighted towards the second half.

"With 81 per cent of budgeted sales already completed, exchanged or reserved, we remain on track to perform in line with market expectations for the full year.

"Furthermore, we remain confident in our key markets, and have significant latent value in our development and land portfolio which is held at cost, as well as plenty of opportunity to grow in order to meet our stated medium term targets.

"This together with our rock solid balance sheet underpins our decision to raise the interim dividend by 5 per cent.”