The former chancellor of the exchequer, Philip Hammond was candid on Sunday’s Kuenssberg show. There is conflict between providing 300,000 new homes a year and the truth, many Conservative in rural areas do not want the homes near them. He added, everyone wants a solution, provided it is not on their doorstep.
He says the truth. To preserve and strengthen local democracy means this is where housing policy must start. Is it possible after four, even five decades of misguided planning control policy? Yes, if radical new local spatial housing policies are introduced when existing local plans end.
Several changes will be needed. In rural areas, the most important is that local councils will take control of the supply of new housing land. Put simply, they must buy the future housing land needed ten or twenty years before these building sites are needed at current use value. Government must reject the broken system, which gives the private sector control over local spatial housing distribution. It has failed. And explains why new housing in rural locations is universally hated. Instead control of building land must rest with the local council. Combining land ownership, and development control powers taken together will give back to local communities control of their own spatial environment for the first time since the end of WW2. Acceptance of this policy U-turn relating to land control is fundamental to its implemention. It places local communities where they want to be: in control of their own destinies.
There is an obvious possible flaw in this local control model. What happens if the local community fails to show the leadership needed to deliver the next generation of affordable homes. One answer is the re-birth of the Commission for New Towns. There may be others.
Ian Campbell
1st November 2022
