It is time the UK government took a fresh look at its housing ambitions and admitted what the industry has been saying for more than a year: that they are simply not achievable. These were policies designed for a boom, not possibly the worst housing slump since the second world war, and there should be no embarrassment in admitting as much. Housing officials have no shame in admitting this in private, but most quickly add that it would be difficult to drop the targets without a scapegoat. The housing construction targets are perhaps the most obvious example, with the aim to produce 240,000 homes a year looking increasingly far-fetched. Annual production figures are instead sinking, seemingly inexorably, towards 100,000, because of the widespread freeze on development among the private sector builders. It is not just the housing target of 3m new homes by 2020 that looks ambitious. There is also a groundswell of concern about the chances of success for the government