“I just hope they fail well.”

There’s two ways of reading that statement, said of Labour’s housing plans at last week’s conference. One is gloomy, doomy even, grounded (down) in recent delivery stats. Given we failed to break out of the low 200,000s over the last parliament, why should we expect to deliver more than 300,000 homes a year during this one?

The other way of reading what sounds like a plea is far less fatalistically. Take it as a combination of pragmatism and grounded optimism. When politicians say they will be delivering 1.5 million homes over the course of this parliament Jo(e) Public expects the handing over of 1.5 million sets of keys by 2029.

Was that ever realistic? Was it even what was intended? I’d argue not. But that doesn’t mean that’s not how the message is landing.

So, failing well in that context means having the building blocks (pun intended) in place for accelerated delivery. It means hitting a level of planning approvals that makes it possible. It means handing over tens of thousands of homes each year – to renters, to homeowners and to social tenants. And it means, I’m afraid, a conveyor belt (though perhaps, not now at least, an MMC conveyor belt) of photo opps with hard-hat sporting ministers.

Like the senior figure from this sector who said it, I think “failing well” is a legitimate outcome, though best not set as a goal, much less said out loud on a podium. Read this way "fail well" isn't a million miles away from "succeed". It certainly says "bring it on", striking the optimistic tone on which this sector thrives and which was much in evidence in Liverpool last week, despite what you may have read.It was a tone very much in evidence at the dinner ING hosted at conference in partnership with Howells. Almost 20 of us discussed how this sector could support the government’s mission to kick-start economic growth more widely, and its ambition to build more specifically.

Round the table were developers like HUB and Prologis UK, investors like Royal London Asset Management, advisors like Cluttons, Scape and Trowers & Hamlins, the British Property Federation, and cities that included Liverpool City Council and Birmingham City Council. And despite the disparate group, there was consensus: stability, confidence, pace and even love are what the sector wants to see from government. It’s what local government wants to see from national government too.

But above all, and it was said repeatedly at dinner, it’s a spirit of partnership that matters most.

It’s partnership that will ensure all parties can work within existing rules to deliver 1.5 million homes in the next five years. It’s partnership that will secure planning reforms that, perhaps in the next parliament, will deliver the next 1.5 million. And it’s partnership that can deliver on what can only be a long-term ambition to secure the new towns that might deliver another 1.5 million homes in the decades that follow.

To go further, it's partnership that requires a much wider scope than before: partnership between the public and private sectors; partnership between town halls and Whitehall; and partnership between political parties. Without all of the above we won’t meet current and future housing need, and we won’t deliver the critical infrastructure that can make places thrive.

Without partnership – up/down, left/right, public/private - not only won't we succeed, we won’t even fail well. We’ll simply fail.