How to make residents into welcoming hosts? Should objectors pay?
The story in today’s edition of the The Times (27 July) by the Whitehall and the Political Editors has caught attention. We’ll see soon. Would a 50% target uplift make all the difference? Targets might in the short term help, say the next 10 years. But are secondary considerations. To overcome opposition to new homes and infrastructure there is one objective, and it is foundational. It is absolute in its importance. How do we make residents opposed to change, who live in locations where land use must change on behalf of the national interest into welcoming hosts of change in their area? ? Win this spatial battle and a lot of other policies aspirations will become deliverable.
It is I think primarily a communication issue, once the message is agreed. By this I mean there must be political alignment in Westminster. To some extent there is: one party wants 1.5 million new homes. The other wants 1.6 million, all within five years. All parties want the infrastructure and the economic growth. So there is, on reflection more common ground than the political noises suggest. Gove’s levelling up agenda at detail level also provoked some evidence of shared aspirations.
How to do it? After a generation of negativism towards change, this change in Westminster must be the start point. Followed quickly by a national spatial plan. But whatever is proposed must be measured viewed understood and promoted in a very local context. Local residents live with the results for a long time. Take as an example Windsor and Maidenhead’s housing supply challenge. They need to meet their own housing needs. It is 80% + green belt. And they must find space for another 10,000+ homes from Slough’s overspill. Slough have no land. Stantec the engineers were commissioned to identify spatial solutions. They suggested lots of blobs of haphazard housing plus a new town in the west of the area by the M4. No doubt each site had its arguments for and against housing.
My approach is different. As an ex-resident of next door Surrey Heath I would agree the Stantec solution is unappealing. For example what happens when the local plan period ends? Has the problem gone away? Where does the next cycle of housing go? This sort of short sighted (15 years local plan cycles) is not sustainable long term planning. We need to plan a generation ahead. So can my ex-neighbours export their housing need to the nearest council area with lots of white land (unlike W & M’s at over 80%)? And if there is a willing host, how much will residents in W & M pay through rates supplements to fund rates holidays for residents in the host locations?
This approach is radical. It is also sustainable. It make’s residents put a price on saying no, which until now has had no price. Without this sort of thinking, rudely ‘put your money where your mouth is’ is now needed. Otherwise I fear enhanced housing target’s will eventually be seen as one more mirage.
Ian Campbell
27 July 2024
