The new prime minister has assured the Conservative MP for Aldridge-Brownhills Wendy Morton his government will protect the green belt and and the policy is to adopt a ‘brownfield first’ strategy. She is worried saying ‘we are at risk of 8000 new homes being dumped in the constituency’. The PM wisely adds that it is important we build homes in the right places.
Can these two policies both happen? Where do the 8000 homes now go? Someone with commercial objectives thinks her constituency is the right place. Is the intervention Wendy Morton seeks in conflict with government growth promises and freedom for the market to operate in response to supply and demand pressures? Put plainly, does this intervention help or hinder future productivity?
The way forward exists, but many local MP’s and local councillors do not want the added responsibility for dealing with wicked spatial issues. This is understandable but it is an abdication of local leadership.
Ten years ago many local MP’s and councils gained the power to decide their own spatial policies, returned from Whitehall to local councils. This happened when regional planning was abolished by the David Cameron 2010/2015 government. Since then government leadership has stopped on housing land, and in reality local leadership has not taken it over. Saying no to haphazard house building here and there is understandable. Saying yes to a plan to build enough houses for the next two generations, 60 years ahead in their areas and where on their unprotected land seems to be impossible. Thinking ahead needs leadership with foresight. There is little evidence it exists. Sadly plenty of evidence of the opposite, myopia.
Ian Campbell
7 November 2022
