At UKREiiF in Leeds last week communications consultancy SEC Newgate launched its fifth survey of 485 local councillors sitting on planning committees. The results offer an interesting but alarming glimpse of their insights into housing policy failure. Most must be muddled or confused.
92% of councillors report the housing crisis has persisted or worsened; 77% consider it severe in their area; 76% say the government’s homes target of 1.5 million by summer 2029 is unachievable- this prediction due apparently to the construction sector’s skills shortage (33%), land banking 19% and lack of local infrastructure- these hurdles being they believe the root causes of the housing supply failure. Interesting! But despite these barriers the same councillors continue to have optimism that effective solutions are achievable and that all is required is genuine partnership between national government, local councils, developers and communities. What this actually means is not stated. Perry Miller of SEC Newgate says ‘The National Planning Barometer 2025 reveals a significant disconnect between national policy ambitions and the realities faced by those on the front lines of planning and delivery’. and goes on to report ‘Councillors are very clear that addressing the root causes of the failure to. build enough homes is essential if the housing crisis is to be meaningfully addressed’.
But the root causes councillors cite are the wrong roots. Lack of construction staff is a short lived hurdle. Easy to solve with time. Land banking is dismissed by the CMA but will play some role as developers exploit the housing supply shortages councils create. It is an issue of marginal relevance. And lack of local infrastructure. Which is due to their own council’s failures to capture and use the development value bonanzas their own action and those of their predecessors have created.
How can they be optimistic? What lessons from decades of policy failure have councillors learnt? Where is their spatial leadership? What are they doing about identifying where their future housing will go? What are they doing about securing control of this land before their own actions let hope value escape and boost its value? Are they shrewdly looking ahead for their voters children or are they simple process clerks?
There is a housing crisis. Because for decades not enough new homes have been built. This is because land is too expensive. It difficult to find. Which explains the recent proliferation of planning consultancies. Land is too expensive despite being in plentiful supply because land with planning consent is severely rationed by local councils since the seventies. As a result homes are far too expensive..In any normal market very expensive products or services bring forward new suppliers to increase the supply. For forty years or more local councils have stopped up this solution. They, and they alone are the culprits. The shortages of homes are not due to lack of construction staff, or land banking or local infrastructure. The land shortage is due solely to thirty or forty years of local councillors deliberately restricting new housing supply to stop, or severely slow down local land use change. Because they and their voters do not like local change. Many dislike it with a curious intensity that starves the future of its oxygen.
The result of this blind local leadership is excessive house prices, haphazard spatial land use change, distrust of planning, reduced national prosperity and reduced productivity as new generations freedom to move is blocked. Devolution will accelerate these destructive forces. The future result unless local attitudes change will be we drift from accommodation poverty for some, to accommodation poverty for many, and slum living for some at the bottom of society. We could change this nightmare into a dream by planning decades ahead and showing residents that change can bring good outcomes too…..it just needs leadership and patience.
Ian Campbell
28 May 2025
