In December 2024, Prime Minister Keir Starmer unveiled his government’s “plan for change,” outlining specific targets for key sectors including housing, healthcare waiting lists, and living standards.
These were presented as “measurable milestones” designed to “track our progress and allow the British people to hold us to account.”
One year on, BBC Verify examines the government’s progress against these outlined pledges.
A central pillar of Starmer’s plan is the construction of 1.5 million “safe and decent homes” in England.
This target is set for completion by the end of the current Parliament, in 2029.
The government is monitoring progress based on ‘net additional dwellings’ – the difference between new builds/conversions and demolitions.
While no specific annual target has been established, achieving the overall goal necessitates an average of 300,000 new homes per year.
Current figures indicate that Labour is overseeing the addition of just over 200,000 homes annually.
Government ministers maintain that the 1.5 million target was always intended to be achieved through increased construction in the later years of the Parliament.
However, it is noteworthy that the current delivery rate is, at this stage, lower than that of the final years of the previous Conservative administration.
When will we know? Full-year figures to the end of March will be released in November.
Progress can be tracked, including within specific localities, via BBC Verify’s housebuilding tracker, which utilizes a more timely indicator: the number of new homes receiving their first Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). These figures are released approximately one month after the end of each quarter.
Regarding healthcare, the government has pledged that 92% of patients in England will be seen within 18 weeks by the end of this Parliament.
There have been initial indications of progress.
The latest NHS data for England shows that in October 2025, 61.7% of patients awaiting procedures were seen within 18 weeks.
This represents an increase from 58.8% when Labour assumed power in July.
However, significant progress remains necessary, as the 92% target was last achieved in 2015.
When will we know? Waiting list figures are typically released approximately six weeks after the end of each month.
Starmer’s plan also includes a commitment to ‘raising living standards in every part of the United Kingdom’.
The government is tracking ‘real household disposable income” (RHDI) per person – which provides a measure of income after taxes, benefits, and inflation – expecting it to grow over the course of the Parliament.
The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s forecasting body, projects an average annual increase of just 0.5% for this measure.
If realized, this would represent the second-weakest parliamentary growth rate since the 1970s.
The weakest growth occurred under the previous Conservative government, during which living standards declined.
Another metric used by the government to assess progress on living standards is GDP per head – the size of the economy divided by the population.
The OBR forecasts a 1% increase in GDP per head for 2025.
When will we know? RHDI figures are released approximately three months after the end of each quarter. GDP per capita figures are published around six weeks after the end of each quarter.
Concerning crime, the pledge is to “put police back on the beat” by deploying an additional 13,000 officers, police community support officers (PCSOs), and volunteer special constables in neighbourhood policing roles in England and Wales by the end of the Parliament.
While the Home Office has not provided a specific breakdown of the 13,000 figure, it has indicated that it will “work with police forces on the mix of roles” and that this will “vary from force to force”.
According to the latest Home Office figures, as of March 31, 2025, there were 17,175 full-time equivalent (FTE) police officers and PCSOs in neighbourhood policing roles in England and Wales.
This represents an increase of 214, or 1.3%, since March 31, 2024.
When will we know? The government has stated that detailed figures on neighbourhood policing will be published in January 2026, followed by bi-annual updates in March and September.
The pledge for education aims to have “75% of five-year-olds in England ready to learn when they start school”.
The government defines this as achieving a “good level of development” in the Early Years Foundation Stage assessment, which is based on teachers’ assessments in areas such as language, personal, social, emotional development, and maths and literacy.
Official data from the Department for Education indicates that, in the 2024-25 school year, 68.3% of children in England achieved a good level of development.
This is a slight increase from 67.7% the previous year.
When will we know? The figures for the 2027-28 school year will be released in November 2028.
Starmer’s plan includes a commitment to “at least 95% clean power by 2030”.
This represents a slight shift from the election manifesto pledge of “zero-carbon electricity by 2030”.
In November 2024, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) – the government’s independent system planner and operator for the energy transition – concluded that it was “possible to build, connect and operate a clean power system for Great Britain by 2030, while maintaining security of supply”.
However, the NESO added that achieving this would be “at the limit of what is feasible”.
In 2024, clean sources accounted for 73.8% of electricity generation in Great Britain, according to government statistics and definitions.
When will we know? Figures for the proportion of UK-wide electricity coming from low carbon sources are published in the Energy Trends publication on the last Thursday of each quarter, providing figures for the previous quarter.
Additional reporting by Daniel Wainwright, William Dahlgreen, Mark Poynting, Gerry Georgieva and Tamara Kovacevic
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